Dragon’s Claw Read online

  Which is how one rickshaw encountered a Louisville slugger in the hands of Jolting Jo DiMaggio, who hit for the outfield, causing the cab and its two war mages to disappear over the horizon.

  But, I realized, while we were slowing the Corps down, and causing them to expend some magic, we weren’t stopping them. And we were fast running out of ads. One of the last I’d enchanted was a giant arm, which normally reached out of the side of a building to wave at potential customers. Now it reached out to grab a passing rickshaw and smash the cab into its building, over and over and over.

  Until it suddenly disappeared in a brown cloud, leaving the deft little chariot to buzz onwards, unmolested.

  Like the rest of the street.

  “Here they come!” Ray yelled.

  “I know! I got this!”

  “No!” he screamed, grabbing my arm and pointing. “Here they come!”

  And I looked up to see an army of vampires—Ming-de’s at a guess—who were running down the crossroad, straight at us. It hadn’t taken them half as long to cross the city as I’d expected, like the mages hadn’t been held up nearly as much as I’d hoped. Forcing me to choose whose hands I’d prefer to die in.

  I decided I might last slightly longer against the mages, turned the notgun on the vamps, and pulled the trigger. The last of its power rocketed out, forming a huge, glittering net, like the ones I’d seen back at the consul’s containing the insanity. It did it this time, too, only how long it would last was anyone’s guess.

  Not that it mattered; we were about to be run down by a bunch of flying chariots—

  Until Hye-Jin came back, and in a big way. She and her forces slid back down their lines, or in a few cases jumped or dove straight onto the mages as they flew underneath, killing at least a dozen before anyone realized what was happening. And, suddenly, it was a very different fight.

  The strangely cute battle on the road was over; the desperate slaughter had begun.

  And I might have been wrong about that untrained mafia stuff, because Hye-Jin’s people were good. Very good. And, apparently, I wasn’t the only one who knew how to buy what I couldn’t make, because a magical battle was suddenly raging in the skies above us.

  But it wasn’t going to be enough, either.

  I grabbed Ray’s sleeve. “You said you had a guy, right?”

  It took him a second. “You—you want to go?” he looked at me in disbelief, while clutching his drawn sword.

  “I want you to go. Get to your friend, get a portal, and get out of here—”

  “What? No!”

  “Listen to me. We’re not a fixed point anymore, so the regular gates won’t work. But human Hong Kong is the same place it’s always been. Your friend may be able to shoot a small portal out—”

  “So what? I’m not—”

  “—and then reverse it. You can reverse the flow on those things—you know that as well as anyone.” Ray was something of a portal master; it’s what he used to do for Cheung. “You could find the senate—”

  “Like hell!” The hood flapped over his face again, and Ray fought it aside. “What the fuck is this? You think I’m stupid?”

  “I don’t think you’re stupid—”

  “Then stop acting like it! First of all, it’s not that easy to hit a target, even when it’s stationary, if you’re not! Second, reversing the flow isn’t a cake walk, and can blow up in your face if you screw it up! And third, the senate’ll take another hour or more to get here, and then what am I supposed to do? Somehow find ‘em in the middle of seven million people? ‘Cause, sure—that’s gonna work!”

  “Ray—”

  “You just want me out of here! Go on, admit it! You think I’m a screw up. You think I’m too weak to fight and that I’m gonna be a drag on you! You think—”

  “I think you’re my Second!” I snapped, referencing the fact that I’d recently promoted him to the most important position in a vampire family. It had seemed to make sense at the time, since the only vamp followers I had were his guys anyway, but now I needed to know that he understood what that meant.

  And it didn’t look like he did. He said something, but it was mostly incoherent rage sounds, to go along with a contorted face and gesticulating arms. Finally, some actual words managed to escape his throat, and then it was like they couldn’t stop.

  “—never cared about me, nobody did, not even my old master. But you—you adopted my guys even though you didn’t have to, even though nobody expected you to. And then you formalized it when you thought you and Dorina were gonna tear each other apart, because you wanted to know that they’d be taken care of—that I’d be taken care of—in case you died!”

  “Ray, listen—”

  “No, you listen! That’s when I knew, okay? That’s when I knew I wasn’t crazy, no matter what anyone said! You cared when nobody did, no matter what kind of bullshit you try to sell everybody else—bad girl bitch, don’t care about no one—bullshit! So, you’re my master, and I’m your Second, no matter what anybody thinks. And a Second don’t leave his master in a fight for her life!”

  “He does if she orders him to,” I said, and cut him off when he started to protest again. “That mage is only one man, and he was heading toward exhaustion the last time we saw him. What if he’s already dead somewhere? What if he isn’t dead, but he lost?”

  “But I can’t—”

  “You can; you’re the only one I know who can make a portal work in these conditions—in any conditions! The senate knows what’s at stake; they will find a way to get here. You have to get them in—”

  “And what?” Ray raged. “Find your dead body? What am I supposed to do then?”

  “A Second’s last job. Avenge me,” I said, as the net broke and a bunch of vamps began to pour out. “Go!”

  He went.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  For a while after that, it was straight up slaughter. I didn’t have time to look for Ray, to see that he made it off the battlefield. I didn’t have time to check on how Cheung was doing, or if any were getting past us. I didn’t even have a chance to realize that our guys had made it from the other battlefield, chasing Ming-de’s forces, until one saved my life.

  I’d just beheaded one vamp, then turned and gutted another, who was leaping for me from one of the rickshaws buzzing overhead. He splattered me with a curtain of blood, some of which got in my eyes, which is why I failed to see the third about to jump me. Dorina sensed something and spun us, but we were mostly blind for a second.

  Luckily, it didn’t matter.

  I wiped a sleeve across my face just in time to see a vamp in Zheng’s style of armor shoot a sinuous, Chinese-style dragon out of his chest, which caught a vamp mid-leap. It clamped its jaw down on its struggling captive, then retracted abruptly back to its owner. Who staked him.

  The man gave me a brief wave and was gone, but the encounter made me wonder what had happened to my own helper. I felt around on my arm, under my jacket, and something swatted at my finger. “Here, kitty, kitty,” I said, feeling stupid. And the next thing I knew, I had a thousand pound back up.

  I didn’t feel so stupid, after that.

  Things also got easier for a while, as I learned a whole new appreciation for the hunter spec in RPGs. I lost track of our kills, which I tried to keep to Zhu’s forces, but didn’t always succeed. The battle was insane, like nothing I’d ever experienced, forcing me into survival mode instead of anything like strategy.

  And even then, it wasn’t always enough.

  I ended up with a nasty burn, when I forgot to watch the fight overhead. Most of the bridges were on fire, and dropping pieces of burning wood everywhere, sometimes whole houses. It left the battlefield covered in everything from campfire-sized blazes to bonfires, although that’s not what got me.

  One of Hye-Jin’s vamps jumped off a bridge, knocked a mage out of a rickshaw, and tried to make off with it. Only to have the mage catch the side, flip around and hit the vamp with a fireball spell at po
int blank range. The vamp basically exploded, and one of the burning pieces landed on me, because there were too many to dodge.

  The battle in the air and along the bridges was crazy, but the real insanity was on the ground. Within minutes, Kitty was down to the size of a normal tiger, because he’d jumped in front of me twice, taking spells meant for me. And yet I’d still ended up with my hair ablaze and a spell that shot by my face so closely that Dorina had to switch our vision to infrared for a minute, while my eyeballs recovered.

  But, somehow, we were holding our own. Partly due to the ferociousness of the local fighters, a bunch of weary, smoke-blackened men and women with the grim determination of people protecting their homes and families. They just didn’t quit, and they weren’t concerned with any of the grandstanding tactics I was used to from vamps, who often didn’t just want to kill me, they wanted to look good doing it.

  These people were straight up butchers, with no quarter given, and none of the usual courtesies of vamp on vamp combat. Anything went, including using the fires to immolate anyone who got close, and everyone was close. There were a lot of burning vamps on that battlefield, along with the smell of cooking human flesh, the ozone tang of spent magic and the stench of gunpowder.

  Which is why the arrival of the city’s own magic was so incongruous, even more so amid the gore of battle than it had been on the road. But the red line I’d painted to protect our people had gotten blown or washed away in spots. And the pretty, glittery, murderous graffiti were starting to leak in.

  Zhu’s people didn’t seem to know what to do with that.

  The monkeys had discovered the labyrinth overhead, and were amusing themselves by throwing burning debris down at the vamps. The toucans were divebombing vamps and mages alike, occasionally pecking out an eye. And the headless pharmacist was going strong, and although he couldn’t see anything anymore, he was still laying waste.

  Of course, he was as much of a danger to our side as our opponents, all the graffiti was, but we were adapting better.

  Maybe being a trained soldier in a melee wasn’t that much of an advantage, after all. The local mafia were used to street fighting, which is what this had basically turned into—a huge street brawl. And while the other side outnumbered us by maybe four to one, they kept wasting time trying to get organized, and it was cutting at their efficiency.

  But it looked like the war mages, at least, had figured that out, and had gathered in force on one of the bridges. Not so many that they’d attract attention, because Zhu’s people had been careful not to let them group up. But there was a knot of maybe twenty in a burning house on one of the smaller bridges, doing something I couldn’t see.

  It worried me, because a group of half a dozen had taken out the octopus, moments ago. It had been catching the spells they lobbed at it and tossing them back, something that had surprised even me, since I hadn’t told it to do that. But I had said to guard the pagoda, and it had done a bang-up job.

  Until half a dozen mages turned it into purple smoke.

  It didn’t look like anybody else had noticed this latest group, maybe because there was fire on three sides of them, as the walls of the house took time to burn. And while they did, they were providing a smoke screen—literally—that shielded the mages from view of most of the battlefield. If you weren’t looking back from the beach, they were basically invisible.

  “You seeing this?” Hye-Jin asked, flying up in a battered rickshaw with an engine so loud I almost couldn’t hear her over it.

  “I’m seeing it!” I yelled.

  “Wanna do something about it?”

  “Read my mind.” I jumped aboard and we were off, along with the half a dozen magic grenades she passed me, because I guess I was gunner.

  She made a couple passes through the labyrinth, getting dangerously close to the bottoms of bridges and the sides of burning houses, while swerving to avoid a bunch of gunfire from somewhere I didn’t have time to see. Vampires were falling out of the sky like rain, jumping from the higher levels, because I guess they’d been warned. And making the mages do a double take because they realized something was happening, but didn’t have time to react.

  I almost didn’t, either, because we were speeding ahead, taking turns so sharp it was all I could do not to fall out. Burning laundry hit me in the face, burning debris fell all around us, drifts of smoke, black and dense and oily, left me blind and threatened to choke me. And all the while people screamed, buildings exploded and engines roared.

  Okay, maybe the battle upstairs wasn’t so much easier.

  But Hye-Jin didn’t need to see; she obviously knew this area like the back of her hand. A moment later, we shot out of the smoke into rain-filled air, and she yelled “Now!” And I popped the pins on the grenades and threw, hoping I’d hit the little house before it finished flashing by.

  I guess I did. Because there was an explosion, and then another and another, loud enough to deafen me. And then the big one, the earth shattering one, the one that sent us spinning toward the ground so fast that—

  I don’t remember hitting down. I don’t remember passing out, although it couldn’t have been for long. I just remember coming around to a very different landscape.

  There was a lot of black smoke and a strange, pink sky—a lot more of it suddenly, because the bridges were gone. Bodies were everywhere, scattered across the ground, which I’d expected; but strangely, a lot of them seemed to be moving. Like maybe the main force of the blast had stayed in the air, but they’d gotten caught in the same shock wave that had capsized us.

  Maybe we didn’t kill everybody, after all, I thought.

  And then I realized: some of the bodies were talking.

  “What the hell?” A nearby mage, young, black and confused looking, sat up, shaking his head and coughing.

  I stared at him, because war mages—enthralled ones, anyway—didn’t talk.

  He spotted me in the wreckage. “Hey. You all right?”

  I blinked at him for a moment, confused and disoriented, and then alarmed when he got to his feet and came at me.

  “Hey! It’s okay. I just want to help,” he said, when I snarled and drew a knife. One I didn’t use, because he had hands up, in the universal don’t-freak-out-on-me-please gesture, and because I’d just realized something.

  Something huge.

  I stared around at a battlefield full of dazed and disoriented people. There were some still fighting here and there, on the fringes, but for the most part, people were just sitting up, looking confused. Like Cheung had when I staked him, I realized.

  Just after the spell was broken.

  I stared at them, and suddenly felt like crying, because yes! Thank you, God! Or thank you war mage. I’d never doubt you again!

  He must have broken the spell while we were fighting, but we didn’t know it. Because this wasn’t a spell that snapped; it wore off, and while it was wearing off, people were still foggy brained enough to keep doing whatever they’d been doing. At least until enough time had passed, or until something huge—like a massive explosion—jolted them out of it!

  My God, I thought. Was it over?

  It was hard to believe, but it scanned. I’d been able to break Cheung’s enthrallment, because he was a first level master, and the spell had probably had a hard time holding him anyway. And there’s not much that will get the attention of any vamp better than a stake through the heart! But even so, it hadn’t been until he was caught and unable to get away that he really came around.

  Like everyone else was doing now.

  The young mage gave up on me and hurried off to assist somebody else who was calling for help. I saw Cheung’s boys helping some of their wounded off the causeway, and the master vamp himself showed up a moment later. “Did we win?” he asked, looking confused but hopeful.

  “Maybe?” It was as much as I was willing to commit to. “There’s still some fighting—”

  “We’ll deal with it. Damned strange battle to end up unbloo
ded!”

  He ran off to get some street cred for his men, and I fought my way free of the wreckage. Only to find Hye-Jin impaled on one of the split and pushed up boards of the pier, faintly moving. Her heart wasn’t staked so much as missing, obliterated by the force of the crash and the size of the board. But her head was intact and she was a master. She’d make it.

  “I’m going to get some of your people,” I told her, clasping her hand.

  It squeezed back, briefly.

  “Fuck my life,” she whispered, but she smiled.

  I smiled back and turned around to see Oscar, Marlowe’s pathetic excuse for a vampire, loping my way across the battlefield, dodging drifts of smoke, burning debris and strange, glittery creatures. And I guessed he’d had a day, too, because when a curious butterfly the size of an eagle came fluttering around his head, he ripped it out of the air and threw the crumpled thing into a fire.

  Harsh, but I feel you, I thought, as he spotted me.

  And the next second, with that always startling vamp speed, he was by my side.

  “Stay with her,” I told him, kicking the burning bits of the wreckage farther away. “I’m going to get help.”

  “I don’t think so,” he said savagely.

  “What?” I looked up. “What are you—

  He stabbed me.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Time seemed to slow way, way down. Possibly because of the slow-time vamps experience when bad things happen. Or possibly because my brain couldn’t process the image of the knife sticking out from between my ribs. It would have taken the heart, but Dorina had noticed something I hadn’t and turned us at the last second.

  But not enough.

  It wasn’t mortal—yet—but goddamn it wasn’t good.

  What the fuck had I missed?

  I didn’t have time to ponder it. Oscar cursed and pulled out the knife, and I felt a lung deflate. But there was no time to process that, either, no time for anything but countering the blows he was raining down on me. And, suddenly, the fumbling idiot I’d known was a master with a knife, so much that I was barely countering him, and I’d been doing this for five hundred years!