by Rhys Ford
“No, old man, I don’t, so I’ll let you get back to your cooking,” I responded softly, leaving off the respectful honorific most Mandarin speakers would afford an elder. Keeping my back to the wall, I followed Leonard down the span. “Thanks for your time. We’ll be on our way now.”
For an elderly fae, he was quick, slinking across the carpet on his gnarled bare feet. It took him less than a blink of an eye to reach my side, and I had my gun out without even realizing I’d drawn it. His knife clanged against the muzzle of my Glock, his face pressed in against my upraised arm with only an inch separating my flesh from his sharpened teeth. Leonard was back at the doorway, his gun up, but I nodded him off when the old fae took a step back.
“Do yourselves a favor, chóng, and listen to me.” His breath left a wash of decay in my lungs, hot despite the distance between us. “You look for another way down once you find that thing. It would be better for all of us if my knife was only used on chickens today.”
I didn’t like being shoved around, and unless it was someone I respected, I liked being bossed around even less. My fae instincts fought with my common sense. His wings quivered ever so slightly, a humming challenge so visceral, so primal it made my shoulder blades itch. There were times I wasn’t okay with being a hybrid, caught between human and faerie, and this was one of those moments. I was bigger, stronger, and for all of his cunning and wiles, I probably could have taken him down.
If I wasn’t a cop. If I wasn’t wearing a badge. If I hadn’t suckled from a mother who’d bled justice and righteousness. A Hell of a lot of ifs—and the weight of a gold shield meant I couldn’t, wouldn’t challenge the old man where he stood.
But damned if I didn’t want to.
My gun’s muzzle was still pressed to his chest, and I deliberately slid my finger away from the trigger, not breaking eye contact. He was dying, and from the sour chemical smell coming off his skin, it was going to be a hard death packed with drugs to numb his bones to liquid. He was looking for an easy way out… or at least that’s how it felt to me.
I wasn’t going to give him the satisfaction. I wasn’t going to be his final fight, and he sure as Hell wasn’t going to be mine.
“Tell you what, húdié shuāngdāo, if there’s another way down, I’ll take it just because I don’t want to see your ugly face again,” I growled. “But if there isn’t and you make one move against my partner, I’ll make sure you’re put in a box so small you’re going to have to fart to get fresh air. Because I won’t kill you, old man. I’m going to make sure you live forever.”
Six
THE ROOF access from Wang Shi spat us out into the middle of a large span stretching over a few streets, jogging across the nested buildings with several arched bridges connecting to other rooftop islands. Finding the shrine god in this gōngyù was going to be a mess.
Like many of Chinatown’s buildings, the two-story brick square housing the Wang Shi Benevolent Society hosted one of Chinatown’s most famous features, a gōngyù, a ramshackle rooftop ghetto reminiscent of city walls in Kowloon. Connected by bridges, the gōngyù spanned many of Chinatown’s taller structures, often so thickly built they blocked the sun from getting to the street below.
Several wide bridges connected the rooftop to the gōngyù directly across from it, which wasn’t something I wanted to deal with. If the statue made it to one of the bridges, we were more cooked than the ducks hanging in the restaurant across from where I lived. It was going to be bad enough hunting through the narrow spaces between the shelters. The gōngyù was typical, a jigsaw puzzle of stacked rooftop dwellings stitched out of scrap material, becoming a foundation for others to build on. From the looks of things, the tight maze of alleys below were covered by interconnecting residences, a crazy quilt of colors, building materials, and angles.
With night almost on the city and dark clouds rolling in, the tight walkways between the rows were nearly pitch-black. Small dots of light penetrated the dimness, cast off from bare windows or cracked-open doors. The place smelled of people, both human and fae, with a lingering overlay of bird shit from either pigeons or rooftop chickens kept in coops beside their owners’ doors.
“There’s only one access point onto this span.” Leonard pointed to a wide cobbled-together bridge a few buildings down. “Thing moves fast, but is it smart enough to head over there? How intelligent is it? Do you have any idea?”
“Cursed relics aren’t necessarily smart, but they’re kind of like chickens. They know what an axe looks like.” I stepped around a toppled tricycle, its purple handlebar tassels faded to gray from the sun. “Go left. I’ll take right. Let’s hug the outside and see if we can spot it.”
A few strides took me into the maze, and the rooftop village swallowed me up whole. Keeping my breathing shallow, I listened to the area around me. Normal sounds echoed between the tight buildings, drops of family life coming down like rain. A few feet down, a window was open, and someone was singing, an old operatic tune about the Monkey King.
Within a few minutes of twisting and turning down tight corridors with not a sight of anyone else, I heard a footfall, then a shuffling as someone behind me skidded to a stop. It was too light a weight to be Leonard, and in the warren of a gōngyù, I couldn’t count on it being someone friendly. For all I knew, the old fae from Wang Shi gave in to his lust and wanted a pair of badges to hang from his earlobes. He’d survived triad wars, probably slipping out from between cop fingers for longer than anyone remembered. When I got back to the station, the Violent Crimes squad and I were going to have a serious talk about not knowing there was a red-starred winged demon squatting in my territory.
Pretending to ignore the footsteps behind me, I continued on my way and pulled my Glock from its holster. A quick two-step jog around a corner hid me from view. The deep shadows camouflaged my gun, its long black shape hidden by pressing it against my leg, and I waited to see what would come out of the dim light.
It was definitely a fae, just not the bloodthirsty killer we’d left downstairs.
“Why you here?” An older Okinawan fae woman shuffled into the light. Her eyes gleamed, fractured pearls and starlight beneath a furrowed brow. “You are police, yes? With that badge?”
Wearing neon-green plastic house slippers and a pink-flowered housecoat, the elderly woman was a fierce defender of her gōngyù, brandishing a thick bamboo pole. Her hair was nearly pure white, pulled up into a skewed bun. Her round gossamer butterfly wings sparkled opal, even in the dim light, and she held them firm, not a quiver of nervousness in her proud set shoulders.
“Arcane Crimes. We’re looking for a shrine god, cursed.” I gave a quick description of the statue, leaving out the bit about its elephant testicles. “Have you seen—?”
“Holy motherfucking Hells! What is—Kami! Where are you? There’s a damned—” The broken granite tones of an old man punched through the street sounds coming up from the city. “Oh God, what the Hell?”
In the gōngyù’s tangle, it was difficult to tell where the shouting was coming from, but the woman apparently knew because she scurried away, her pole raised over her shoulder as if a battle awaited her. Knowing the lascivious nature of the statue’s curse, I was more worried for her heart surviving the rush of its presence than any damage it could do.
Luckily, I could outrun an old woman.
Maybe.
“Leonard, over here!” I bolted down the walk, heading toward the shanty she was aiming for. I heard nothing back from him, but it was a long shot he’d heard me in the first place. Or if he had, he probably wouldn’t be able to find me until I was choking the shit out of our ceramic nemesis. “Damn it. Where the Hell is my partner?”
With my luck, he’d somehow ended up pitched over the side of the building and Gaines would have my ass for losing my partner on the first day.
Lights blinked on around us, precious resources for anyone living off the grid in the gōngyù, but things greater than poverty lurked in the shadows. Built out of ol
d wooden garage doors, the old lady’s shack was topped with mismatched tin sheets for a roof, and its cutout windows were sealed with agriculture tarp to keep the heat and bugs out. Someone with an optimistic bent decided the structure needed a coat of orchid paint, and it’d been haphazardly slapped on, too thin to mask the former doors’ beige and moss-green planks. A stovepipe cut up through a corner of the roof, silver duct tape sealing off the hole to protect it from rain. A thin thread of smoke wormed its way out of the cap, worrying me.
If the shrine god upended whatever the old couple was using to bank their fire, the flames would quickly eat through the gōngyù before the moon could rise above the cloud bank gripping the district. Fire was a very real threat to the rooftop ghettos. Despite the damp air and fog moistening the outer structures, surrounding walls blocked most of the interior shacks, leaving them as dry as seasoned kindling. It was not a scenario I wanted to think about. I’d rather the damned statue disappear into the night than have Chinatown burn to the ground.
More crashes followed, and the old man’s shouts grew strident. I was through the door with a push of my shoulder and prayed Gaines would sign off on more damages. From the sounds of things inside the shack, there were going to be plenty of damages.
The old man was human, furious, and armed with a mallet that he wielded at my head with a deadly accuracy. The hit was a good one, smashing across my temple, and I saw stars and stumbled, nearly going down on one knee.
“Stop!” I flung my arm up, hoping to block his next blow. “I’m a cop!”
His eyes were pale, nearly colorless, and as wild as a cheated whore. A loose kimono covered most of his scrawny body, but it did nothing to hide his distended pot belly or knobby knees. The snaps on his robe gave under the push of his stomach, popping open when he took another swing, and I was treated to the sight of his time-grayed BVDs, the front pouch sagging with worn elastic.
He hit me again, and my arm wasn’t enough to stop him. He struck my jaw hard enough to rattle my teeth, and I flung myself back to get away from him. A plastic vegetable crate broke my fall, a corner digging through my jeans. The mallet swung again, and the old man screamed for his wife to flee while he kept me back. Another swing and I caught the wooden hammer with my shoulder, nearly dropping my Glock when my fingers went numb. As much as I didn’t want to shoot the old man, it was tempting, especially when he raised the damned mallet again. Flashing my badge, I shoved him back with my aching shoulder, tumbling him through the open door.
“Don’t make me shoot you, Uncle.” I shoved again, pushing him away. “I have enough problems.”
“I got him!” My partner appeared in the frame just as the old man began to spit curses at me, and Leonard’s massive arms closed around the old man’s chest, pulling him back out of the shanty. The cursing continued, this time in a fae-accented Cantonese, either from the woman I’d met earlier or some other resident in the loony bin we’d stumbled upon. Leonard jerked the man clear and set him down outside of my field of view, and I turned, leaving him to handle the rest of the insanity outside.
Because my prey was rattling around someplace in the cramped shack, and I just had to find it.
The shack had no interior walls, although there’d been an attempt to provide some privacy with screens around a makeshift camp toilet. The couple either was readying to go to bed or simply left their futon open, because it stretched out along one wall, propped up on shipping pallets away from the flattened cardboard boxes they used for flooring. The stovepipe was connected to a converted keg, insulated with thin firebrick, and set into a propane tank rest. Their lives were stashed away into colorful crates marked for apples and cabbages, and judging by the bubbling set of beakers and tubes on a card table, they also appeared to be brewing some kind of hooch.
Books and knickknacks made up most of the mess around me, spilling out from bookshelves lining the shanty’s walls. A clothesline stretched across a space I gathered they used as a kitchen, a basket of daikon and carrots airing out below a flutter of drying panties and worn T-shirts held by binder clips. The place wasn’t as bad as some I’d seen, and despite the old man trying to play whack-a-troll with my head, they seemed like a nice couple.
It was a pity I was going to have to tear the place apart to look for a malevolent statue with too much magic shoved up its ass.
I caught movement near the futon, a rustle in the pillows big enough to catch my eye, and I prayed it wasn’t a cat. I shoved my gun away, then reached for the tea leaves. I didn’t have time to shut down the fire in the keg. It would take my attention off the statue, and I couldn’t trust the people outside to keep the thing contained. From the sounds of things, Leonard had his hands full with the couple, and a murmuring rabble was forming just outside of the broken-in door. We’d tapped for backup on our phones as soon as we hit the roof, but Dispatch hadn’t promised anything other than best wishes and maybe a cup of hot coffee when we got back.
Arcane crimes, while glamorous and exciting, didn’t carry as much weight as homicides and burglaries. We were on our own and armed with plastic baggies of black tea leaves.
The cursed thing broke free of the futon, and I lunged at it, knocking over a pile of books on advanced mathematics. Pens from a fallen cup scattered over the cardboard, and the shrine god scrambled for purchase on the floor, its three good limbs windmilling about. Loose cardboard slid out from under my foot, and I tumbled forward and smashed my head against the pallets. My forehead stung, and a wet red dribble flowed down into my eyes, falling to the floor.
“Fuck!” The last thing the already cursed statue needed was my blood. I was a hybrid, an unnatural fluke of conception no rampaging fertility icon needed to bathe in. I grabbed a towel from the floor, wiped off my temple, and stood up. “Come here, you little bastard.”
There was barely a trace of bloody prints on the cardboard, and the glistening wet path led straight for the door. Great, I literally just poured gasoline on an out of control fire. The damned thing was going to suck every bit of my fae out of my blood straight into its curse, pretty much powering it up and setting it loose to cause more chaos.
“Leonard! It’s headed your way!” I dropped the towel, exchanging it for a plastic tote bag lying nearby. It was big enough to hold the statue and a damned sight better than my jacket. Besides, the cold air was beginning to hit the city, and it found every inch of my overheated skin through the shanty’s walls.
I watched the door, stepping around more books and papers to get to the front of the shack. Pulling my jacket on, I juggled the bag and peered around a long kitchen cabinet the couple somehow shoehorned into the space. Part of a door served as a countertop, and it was relatively stable, barely rocking when I put my hand on it to steady myself.
The damned statue exploded out of its hiding place and rushed past me. I made a grab for it. Its hat broke off in my hand, a long chunk of black-painted porcelain embellished with gold ribbons and red mesh. The ceramic was oddly fragile, crumbling on my palm, and I was careful to shake as much of the dust into the bag as I could. I needed to dig out the salt packets in my jacket or at least plunge my hand into a puddle before the damned lust spell did a number on me.
I lost sight of the statue, then saw its head bobbing past a stack of magazines. It rounded the corner of the cabinet, and the damned thing bolted out the door.
Shoving the bag under my arm, I was as hot on its trail as I could be, but a small fight near the shack’s door was difficult to negotiate, especially since it looked like my new partner let the old man keep his mallet. Their grumbling was loud, pitched up into a hot fury, but their anger quickly turned to a simmer once the statue wove around their legs.
The shrine god was leaking its magic, bleeding it off into any fae and human around it, probably because I’d given it the booster shot it needed to keep going.
“Get back into your homes! There is a police investigation in—”
Leonard let out an outraged yelp as a dreadlocked young wom
an grabbed his crotch. “Hey!”
“Leonard, quit fucking around and come on!” I yelled over my shoulder. “It’s heading to the edge!”
Magic wasn’t the only thing the statue was leaking. A wide trail of fine specks splotched the crisscrossed paths along the society’s roof. There wasn’t going to be enough salt or tea leaves in the city to de-hex the gōngyù, and short of making it rain black tea and shoyu, SFPD was going to have to call in a few witches or there was going to be a rooftop orgy before the hour bled away.
Moving carefully, I kept my eye out for the statue, drawn to the side by a rustling pot of rosemary. A one-eared cat popped its head out of the greenery and hissed at me as I spotted the shrine god dragging its fracturing body up the length of the gōngyù’s sole bridge.
Leaving the cat behind, I bolted toward the arch.
Like all gōngyù construction, the bridge leading to the next building was held together by a hope, a prayer, and a lot of duct tape. In some cases, there was actual engineering, but oftentimes, the residents struck up a mostly illegal deal with whoever owned the base structure and built a way across from another gōngyù. Some bridges were broad, wide enough to stack one-room hovels on either side, while others were barely wide enough for a single person to scurry across while holding their arms out for balance.
This particular gōngyù bridge was more hope and prayer than engineering.
It was old, so at least it’d been there for a while. It had that much going for it, but still it swayed slightly when I put a foot on it. Made up of old ladders and plywood, it rocked and bounced, tilting alarmingly, forcing me to come to a complete stop before I was tossed from the bridge onto the street more than two stories below. Like the headless chicken it was, the statue continued to clump-stomp across.