Dim Sum Asylum

by Rhys Ford

  “Or what? You’ll shoot me?” He turned, taking another careful step through the mud. His wings quivered, and he thrust them back up, but they drooped when he padded closer. “No glorious death, you just said so.”

  “Popping your kneecaps is still an option.” I kept him at a distance, at least three wingspans. Any closer and, despite his advanced age, he could turn Trent’s gun on me. Fear left a coppery smear along my tongue, because as old and frail as he seemed, he didn’t earn those red stars by saving up the box tops from sugary cereals. “One last time, get down.”

  “You’re not even the least bit curious?” He stopped, staring at me as if seeing me for the first time, cocking his head as he rolled his shoulders back. Another wave of chimes tinkled from his wings when he shook out their folds. “About why I’ve done all of this? Why you? Why her?”

  “I’ve been a cop long enough to know evil doesn’t necessarily need a why,” I replied. The shed door rattled, and I heard a faint husky shout come from inside. I wasn’t going to succumb to the lures he’d set. I’d not risen to my grandfather’s bait over the years. I didn’t intend to pitch myself into the honey trap of a carnivorous butterfly. I craned my neck and shouted over the old man, “Jie?”

  “Roku?” It was good to hear her voice, and even better when she cursed at me. Despite the polish she’d slathered on herself, Jie was a guttersnipe at heart. “Get us out of here.”

  “She’s not that important to you,” he murmured, sparing the shed a glance. “Nor the other one inside. Your grandfather’s whore.” I bristled, and his grin curled up, stretching for his ears. “Don’t pretend she is. You’ve distanced yourself from the Takahashi and his family for years now. It took everything I had to get your attention, and now that I have it, you won’t even engage. You’re right. I am dying, but I am going to finish the job I started years ago… wiping the Takahashi registry clean… starting with its heir.”

  He lashed out, elongating his arms in a wild swing, snapping his shoulders forward to propel his body at me. His sleeves hid the blades he now held in his skeletal hands, his bony knuckles white from the effort of keeping his weapons gripped tightly. I ducked, letting the old fae pass over me, but he twisted, slicing at my face. The tip of a blade caught on my skin, tearing a slender line along my jaw. My blood was hot compared to the cold drizzle hitting my face, and I whispered an enchantment I’d learned from my mother when I could barely reach our dining room table.

  Trent’s gun lay heavy in my hand, and I couldn’t risk losing my grip on it to wipe away the trickle coursing down my face. The cut stung, a tickling sear beginning to creep along the length of the slice. There was something on the old man’s blades, something deadly he’d hoped would make it easier to kill me.

  He was going to be sadly disappointed.

  “Someone taught you to counter poisons!” He cackled, clapping his hands and striking his blades’ hilts together. “Has the Takahashi been schooling you in private? Has this show of defiance you’ve made all this time been just that? A show? Is he hiding you in plain sight, sprog? Protecting you from your relatives as you gather power—”

  I hauled off and punched him. Switched Trent’s gun into my other hand, made a fist, and plowed it into his enormous hooked nose, happy to hear it crunch beneath the force of my knuckles striking his skull. He staggered back, spitting blood onto the grass, and I followed through with a strike across his jaw, using the gun hilt in my off hand to weigh down the hit.

  He recovered quickly enough, bringing his knives up and charging, murder lighting up the green in his eyes. The old assassin was ravenous in his hunger, his emotions running high, splotching his cheeks with a flush of red. He was aroused by the death he’d been promising himself, and while I had no intention of falling to his greed, he kept pushing me back with a furious dance of blades.

  I countered as best I could, hampered by Trent’s gun, and for a brief insane moment I considered tossing it away before reason took back over. The need to hurt him was fierce. He’d killed innocent people for no reason other than to feed an ego already destined for Hell. The temper I’d been given by my Scottish mother surged, nearly overwhelming me, and I fought it back as furiously as I did to keep the old fae from stabbing me.

  Punching at his arms, I tried to get him to drop his weapons, but he deflected my blows with an easy shift of his torso, taking himself out of reach. Panting, he struggled to find an opening, but when I landed a solid blow to his chest, he began coughing, black sputum speckling his lips when he shuffled back to get out of my reach.

  “I shouldn’t have let this go for so long. I should have killed you when you lay in your crib,” he ground out, spitting another thick, gelatinous blob at my feet. “I counted on your mother to keep you from becoming one of them. Instead she let herself get killed, and you turned into their pawn.”

  “Don’t even talk about my mother,” I growled, bringing Trent’s gun back up. “Last chance. Get down—”

  “Kill him, Roku.” My grandfather’s cold voice cut through the clearing, and the assassin stiffened, his wings alert and spread, mantling with emotion. “Warning him will do no good. Nothing will stop this one except for death.” Carefully walking the last few steps down, Takahashi nodded at the red-starred fae. “You think you can destroy my family? My legacy? I should kill you myself.”

  “Sofu.” I put as much warning into my voice as I could. He was less of a surprise than the assassin. Some part of me knew he’d show. Even when he’d half ordered me into the compound, I knew he’d be lurking in the shadows. It was what he did, curl up in the darkness like a snake waiting to strike at the first warm thing it felt. “Leave this to me. I’m taking him in.”

  “Do you know who this is? This is the Kodama’s tou—their knife, their blade—although I suppose now, you are their toushi, nothing more than a letter opener.” Takahashi’s lip curled up, disdain turning his face ugly and mean. “This… man… has been killing our family for centuries, picking us off whenever we cross his path. And in turn, we would slaughter every Kodama we came across.”

  “In turn? It was your family who began this. I am merely ending it.” The old fae gave Takahashi a mocking bow, seemingly undisturbed by the gun I held on him. “The Takahashi are vermin, roaches to be crushed beneath our feet. I’ve served five Kodama clan heads in my life, all determined to extinguish the Takahashi. I see no reason to change my vow simply because this one is now too weak to follow through.”

  “You do not speak for the Kodama, Tou. You might have taken their name, but you are nothing but their tool, not their tongue,” the Takahashi railed. “You were the reason I married Kodama Akemi, to put an end to this, to bind our families together and forge a peace. It was a path out of the death spiral we were caught in.” My grandfather lifted his arm, aiming a small Beretta at the assassin’s head. “He would bring that all back to the surface, start that war all over again, Roku. I cannot allow that. He will not take any of mine from me again.”

  “You’ve taken from you,” I reminded my grandfather, and the Kodama assassin chuckled, his mirth a wet roll in his throat. “You’ve killed your own. Hell, I had to stop you from killing Nobu just this morning. Don’t talk about ending bloodshed and embracing peace when you murder your own blood, Takahashi. You can say you do it to protect me, protect Yukiko, but we both know that’s not true. You do it to protect yourself, to protect your ego, so you can say no one can best you. Even now, you’ve arrived here probably because you know it’s safe to come in. I’ll let you play the savior with my grandmother, but don’t think for one minute I’ll let you kill my suspect.”

  “You won’t have a choice.” Takahashi sneered, as proud and arrogant as he’d ever been. “I am your grandfather. I will kill this piece of filth, and you… my own blood and heir… won’t do anything to stop me.”

  “See, that’s where you’re wrong, Sofu, because as you’ve always pointed out, I am here to pick up where you end,” I corrected softly, and I shot him i
n the knee, sending him sprawling face-first into the mud.

  Takahashi went down with a muffled groan, grabbing at his leg as he buckled, dropping his weapon. The shot was a good one, far from any artery. Blood oozed from the wound, and it was enough to distract him from grabbing his gun, which lay a few feet away. He wasn’t going to die. Or at least not yet. There was still time for the old fae to slaughter us where we stood.

  For all of his palsy and rheumy eyes, the winged bastard was fast. I’d barely absorbed the recoil when he was on me, knives flashing, screaming for my death.

  I lost Trent’s gun when I got hit. I also lost my breath. The fae struck me hard enough to knock the wind from my lungs, and we tumbled to the ground, his limbs wrapping around mine. His legs scissored viciously in, over and over, repeatedly smashing my balls and dick between my thighs. My stomach churned, caught in the maelstrom of sick rolling up from my crotch. I was on my back with the assassin under me with one of his hands trapped between us while the other was loose, able to stab me, if only he could get a good angle.

  A blade flashed too close to my face, nearly slicing off the tip of my nose. I felt the wind and a kiss of an edge of my skin when my damned fae blood kicked in with a warning, a little too little and much too late. It was a difficult angle for him, and I returned the favor of crushed balls with a bend of my knees to lift me off the ground enough so I could push my full weight between his legs. My thighs ached, straining at the tilt on the ground and raising my torso, but when I slammed back into him, his whimpering mewl was a thing of beauty.

  His arm went into spasms when I hit him, and his legs twitched, losing their hold on mine. I rolled away, kicking back with my left foot, connecting with his knee hard enough to make my teeth rattle around in the back of my head from the shock wave of bone hitting bone.

  I was up onto my feet before he could get up. It was a bit of a fight to get my blades loose. My cuffs were slippery with mud, and by the time I got both clear of their sleeves, he was on his feet, crouched and ready to attack. There was only a few feet between us, enough space to require crossing soaking-wet grass and a slurry in order to attack, but it hardly mattered. A stride or two would bring us back together, and I couldn’t risk him getting an upper hand.

  I was breathing hard, my heart pounding hard enough to leave a steady nik-nik beat against my eardrum. There were parts of me I didn’t know could ache, but they were doing their best to prove me wrong. Fatigue threatened to take me down. It’d only been a few hours since I’d woken up next to Trent, snuggled down warm in my bed with my body throbbing with a reminder of how long it’d been since I’d had sex. The day went to shit from the moment I’d opened my eyes, and if I wasn’t careful, there was a real possibility I’d be closing them for the very last time if I didn’t keep the old fae at bay.

  “Roku!” Our struggle took us a few yards away from where my grandfather fell, and Takahashi grew paler, his fingers sliding around his wound. He looked wobbly, his eyes fluttering. The shock of being shot was wearing him down, and it wouldn’t be long before he fainted. Or so I thought, because a second later, he shouted at me, “Where’s the gun? Shoot him!”

  “Let me handle this, Sofu.” I honestly didn’t know where the guns were anymore, and I couldn’t spare a second to go look for them. If I didn’t guess the old fae knew what he was doing with his blades simply by how he handled them, the chiming song of red metal stars when his tattered wings rubbed together was a poignant reminder. “Do you still pierce new ones in, Kodama’s Tou? Or do you no longer care enough about counting the souls you’ve taken so you leave the dead in the moment they were taken?”

  “If you’re asking if I’m going to wear a red for you, then the answer’s no,” he shot back. “I’ve killed so many of you it would be like trying to wear a field of rice grains on my back.”

  “Then my grandfather is right.” I loosened my grip on the blades, rolling my wrists. “You’re nothing but a tool now. Something they’ve tucked into the junk drawer by the back door. Something no one remembers where they left it, so they go out and buy a new one instead.”

  “You think you can take me, you piece of shit?” he screeched at me, spittle flying from his swelling lip. I didn’t know if I caught him in the face with my elbow when I shoved him away or if he hit something on the ground, but either way, his garbled words made me feel a Hell of a lot better. “I am the nightmare the Takahashi—”

  I lashed out before he finished, striking his face with my fists. The weight of my daggers’ hilts helped weight my clenched hands when I bashed his jaw. He was old. I didn’t take pride in striking an old man, but the gleaming star field dotting his wings was more than enough incentive for me. Twisting about, he lunged at me, knife pointed forward, but the wet ground proved to be his undoing instead of mine. A slip of his foot in the mud and the fae went flying, skidding past me on his chin, tearing up a bit of the lawn with his hands as he tried to stop his fall.

  The knife I drove into the thick spine of his left wing stuck firm into the ground, pinning him there. Turning around, the blade tore at the membrane surrounding it, but it held, wedged deep into the rich black soil. Panting, he pulled up, trying to break free, but the pain must have been too great, because he immediately collapsed, his lips going blue around the edges. His labored breathing grew thicker, wetter, and the old fae began to cough, his hands shaking when he tried to toss one of the knives at me.

  It missed, clattering against Trent’s gun where it lay, half-hidden in a thick bristle of ornamental grass.

  Bending over hurt, but I grabbed the weapon, keeping an eye on the old man I’d stabbed. My grandfather was awake, barely so, but his leg had stopped bleeding. Lifting the gun, I pointed it straight at the Kodama’s assassin and said, “Now, húdié shuāngdāo, drop your knives and put your hands up in the air or you can join the dead you carry on your wings.”

  Epilogue

  UNSURPRISINGLY, I was put on desk duty the next day for a simple review of the situation since I discharged a firearm and injured a civilian, namely Takahashi. The way I was going, I might as well have made up a bed for the Internal Affairs rep in my loft, because I saw her more than I saw Trent. Still, I was on the fast track to get my badge back, and this time without a tainted smear left behind. Shooting a cop, even a crooked one, made IA take a harder look than shooting an alleged yakuza boss, and for what it was worth, I’d expressed my deepest apologies for putting a bullet into my own grandfather, so riding a desk was the best outcome I could have hoped for. Gaines promised it would only be for a few days, but the gleam in the IA rep’s eye told me otherwise.

  I hadn’t heard from Takahashi since I watched the medics load him into an ambulance and told his security detail they were idiots for letting him roam the property alone. Nobu arrived moments after the cops, and he’d spent a good few hours trying to manage the chaos. I got to speak to Jie for all of ten minutes, and then she disappeared as well, whisked off to the hospital to be checked out, and my grandmother… she’d been a pale, shaken mess when I’d finally gotten the heavy wooden doors to the shed open. Her ageless, beautiful face was pale from shock, but she’d refused treatment, insisting Takahashi’s security take her to my grandfather’s side.

  And that was the last I’d seen of any of them.

  Three days later, the desk and I were fast on our way to becoming best friends, and Trent was sent off to shadow Yamada, a budding friendship deepened by their unspoken agreement to not discuss Yamada’s pitched battle with the inert dragonfly on the fountain before Trent could convince him it wasn’t coming to life after they’d dispatched the other.

  I was pouring a bowl of cereal after coming home, hungry for the sixth or seventh time that day, when a knock reverberated on my front door.

  “You expecting anyone, Bob?” The cat refused to look at me, choosing instead to contemplate the traffic patterns or possibly plot a bloody demise for pigeons roosting on a gōngyù on the building below. Either way, her stubby tail tw
itched with excitement—or murderous intent—and she chattered at the window, ignoring me and the milk carton I’d set out on the counter. Another knock followed, and I frowned, looking at the clock. “Too early to be Trent. He doesn’t get off shift for another hour. This building’s really got to get an intercom system.”

  I could only see the top of a head from the peephole, a fish-eye view of sleek black hair pulled back from someone’s forehead into a queue, and I cursed whoever installed the damned door for forgetting I was living in a district with a massive number of short people. She stepped back, and I sighed, resting my head against the peephole, then twisted the knob to let her in.

  Stepping back, I gave the older woman a slight bow and motioned for her to come in, then checked the hallway for any stragglers she might have brought with her. Nobu gave me a slight head bobble from his perch on a bench near the elevator, and standing nearby, the Maori glared at my cousin until he stood up and formally greeted me with a bow. I closed the door without saying anything, unsure about the protocol of how to greet a man whose boss I was related to and was now lying in the hospital waiting for a knitting-flesh spell to pull his knee back together.

  I found her standing near Bob the Traitor, who apparently instantly fell in love with everyone but me. After scratching between the ears of the cream-and-orange furry monster I’d brought in out of the cold to live in relative comfort and ease, my grandmother turned, tucked her hands into the sleeves of her kimono, then smiled at me.

  “Can I offer you something to drink? I’ve got tea, coffee, and some sketchy milk.” I nodded at the carton I’d pulled out of the fridge. “It’s soy. Can’t do regular cow juice.”