Queen's Gambit

by Karen Chance

  That left piles of debris everywhere, high enough to fill whole alleyways in places and to spill out into the streets. There was also an ocean of shattered glass glinting in the occasional beam of moonlight, like new fallen snow. But that wasn’t a frequent thing, as the cloud cover was thick overhead and completely opaque in the distance. Even up close, a thin mist hung in the air, silvering everything and reducing visibility to maybe a block.

  The charmed map threw a red haze over Ranbir’s face, which wasn’t looking happy. He was trying to chart a path past the groups of moving dots, which none of us were enthusiastic about meeting. We couldn’t use magical weapons against these things, but regular old bullets didn’t do a lot, either.

  What did work was vampire strength, but the vamps kept getting piled on, so evasion was definitely the way to go. Only with blocked off alleys, trash-filled streets, and destroyed buildings, that often wasn’t so easy. It felt like an obstacle course where one wrong move could get us killed.

  No wonder Ranbir was sweating.

  And then an ominous rumble came from further down our street, and everybody was.

  “What was that?” Sarah asked shrilly. She’d followed her brother’s example and loaded up on weapons, but it didn’t look like they had made her feel any better. Her dark hair was up in a no-nonsense bun, to keep it out of her way in a fight, but her eyes were too-wide and her movements were jumpy.

  Zheng had seemed to think that she and her team would be an asset, but he’d had false information. I honestly didn’t know if it had been a good idea to sign these guys on or not, but what choice did we have? Nobody else was crazy enough to try this.

  Of course, maybe that should have told me something.

  “Fast moving bogeys, coming this way,” Ranbir said, watching the map. And using the term we’d decided on for moving obstacles, because ‘monster’ made everybody nervous.

  We dodged out of the street and into an alley—which turned out to be a dead end. It wasn’t supposed to be, but it had been blocked by a mountain of bricks from a destroyed building. And the lane across from it was no better, leading to what the map showed as a massive battle going on between bogies on one of the main avenues. I could hear the screeching and caterwauling from here; I did not want to see it in person.

  But the rumble was now loud enough to cause little avalanches on the garbage mountains and to vibrate under my feet. The streets were a warren, and the buildings made sound echo everywhere. It was impossible to tell where the noise was coming from.

  “Where are they?” I asked, and Ranbir pointed at something I couldn’t see, because we were running now and the map was jittering all over the place.

  But a moment later, I didn’t need an answer, because I saw them: vague figures appearing out of the mist behind us. But not vague enough. For a moment, I just stared at yet another example that a lifetime of strange events had not prepared me for supernatural Hong Kong. Not even close.

  Because we were being targeted by a group of motorcycle riding samurai.

  They were 3-D, with bodies as solid as any of ours. But they were also black and white, as if the magic floating around the dead zones had activated a bunch of illustrations. The closer they got, the more likely that seemed, as they still had the sketch marks and the doesn’t-change-with-the-lighting shading of a drawing.

  It was like being charged by a bunch of cartoons.

  Sword-wielding cartoons, I realized, as steel glinted in a stray beam of moonlight.

  Okay. Running faster now, alongside Sarah, who had noticed our latest problem and was bitching about it in a high-pitched voice. And yeah. Totally not going to rag on her about that later. Assuming there was a later, because the messed-up street had hardly slowed our pursuers down at all, and in fact had helped them by providing a ramp in the form of a fallen wall—

  And now they were arcing overhead.

  “We can take them!” Tomas said, as the rest of us rolled into the shadow of a bunch of burnt-out cars.

  Louis-Cesare reached out and grabbed him, jerking the idiot down as swords rattled against the rooftops overhead. Tomas threw off his hold and glared at us, and I made a be-my-guest gesture. He scowled.

  “I thought dhampirs were supposed to be tough!”

  “Tough, not stupid.”

  He frowned. “Are you calling me stupid?”

  “No, just that the bonus stats all went to pretty.”

  Louis-Cesare laughed, and even Ranbir’s lip twitched.

  Tomas, luckily, took a moment to parse that, and as soon as the last rider arced overhead, we darted into a crumbling edifice.

  We’d been trying to stay on the streets, because the structural soundness of a lot of the buildings was in question. Half of the obstructions were composed of the remains of fallen houses and shops, and even some of the ones still standing weren’t looking like they’d be doing it much longer. Like this one, in fact.

  But there wasn’t a lot of choice, so we got busy wading through the almost knee-high soot in a lobby, then pelted down a smoke damaged corridor and through a door at the end that let out onto a narrow alley.

  Only to find that our pursuers had flanked us.

  Ev and Jason let off a barrage that would have discouraged a platoon, strafing them with suppressing fire, only it didn’t suppress much. Bullets from my .44 Magnum likewise rattled off the samurai’s armor, barely even leaving dents in the surface. And when I threw an incendiary, it had no effect at all.

  Like the birds, they looked like paper but acted like high grade steel.

  The kind that ricocheted weapons’ fire.

  “Don’t shoot inside!” I yelled, as more bogies showed up behind us and we ducked into a building across the alley. But either nobody could hear me over the ringing in our ears, or the cluster of animated horrors had freaked them out. Because bullets were suddenly flying everywhere, with Ev and Jason letting loose with a weapon in each hand.

  Sarah was yelling and crying and covering her ears, because it was loud enough to hurt. Louis-Cesare got in front of me and her, backing us toward the door to the next room, and taking a couple of bullets in the process. And then Sarah and I abruptly found ourselves standing in what looked like a nursery school.

  I glanced back through the door to see that the two vamps had pulled swords, meaning that the sounds of steel on steel had probably just been added to the cacophony of engines revving, people yelling, and a sustained barrage, but I couldn’t tell. My ears were temporarily out of commission, giving me back only ringing white noise.

  Which was why I had nothing to distract me from our newest problem.

  Sarah looked at me, her eyes huge, and yeah. Wasn’t sure how bad this was gonna be, either. Because a bunch of faded, painted pandas on the walls had just brightened and turned their huge, fuzzy heads toward us.

  They looked like a cutesy kid’s mural, with a forest of eucalyptus trees in the background, some improbably large flowers, and some happy insect friends.

  They weren’t.

  “No weapons,” I mouthed, and I guessed she read lips, because she nodded slightly, and slipped her .357 back into its holster.

  Bear #1 regarded me curiously, with a slightly tilted head. He was still chewing on some leaves, which I took to be a good sign. But the black eyes were shiny and suspicious as he checked me over.

  “Get behind me,” I told Sarah, because she was bristling with weapons and we were playing nice here. I had the arsenal with me, so I hadn’t bothered with anything but the stuff concealed by my jacket and in the outer pockets of the bag. The jacket was pretty ripped up, thanks to the Stymphalian birds out there, but it covered the hardware.

  Hers didn’t.

  She got behind me.

  “Okay,” I said, turning my face so that she could see my lips move. “These things are popular protection wards. I saw some in a couple shops when I was here before. Play nice with them; they play nice with you.”

  “What happens if we don’t play nice?”
she screamed, because she couldn’t hear shit right now.

  It was right in my ear, and I guessed I’d had some hearing left, after all. But probably not now. I winced, and then immediately smiled again, because the eucalyptus chewing had just stopped.

  “We get our asses kicked,” I said. And since these things, like every-fucking-thing else in the dead zones, had been bathing in some high-quality magic for a while now, said ass kicking was likely to be epic.

  “Okay,” she yelled. “What’s the plan?”

  “We tell the guys. If they come in nice and easy, we can probably just walk on through. If not—”

  And, of course, it was ‘if not’, because two first-level masters don’t take long to deal with a room full of enemies. The next moment, our little group of Rambos came rushing in, guns and swords in hand. And immediately spotted the bright-eyed pandas on the wall.

  “No!” Sarah and I yelled. “Don’t—”

  They did. Ev and Jason let loose and—yep. I hate being right, I thought as the walls went 3-D and in a hurry.

  Black, fuzzy bodies suddenly jumped out everywhere, the size of grizzlies rather than pandas, and Sarah and I started backing up. But that was a nope as well, as the samurai weren’t dead so much as in pieces, a scattering of lethal body parts across the outer room ready to slice and dice as soon as anything got close enough. Or to kick, I thought, as the bottom half of a rider nailed me in the shin.

  “Other way!” I gasped at Sarah, who shook her head violently.

  “No, no, this way!” And she stepped right in front of the top half of the samurai, who almost took her leg off with a sword swipe.

  I pulled her back, just in time, leaving us stuck in the doorway between two kinds of hell.

  Pick the way you want to die, I thought, as another panda leapt off the wall, fluffed out from 2-D to 3-D, and immediately lunged at us. And reminded me that they are still bears when its paw tore a chunk out of Tomas, who’d dodged in between. And who was not nearly so pretty with half of his face missing.

  Sarah screamed, loudly enough that I distantly heard it, a bright wave of blood spurted, and I threw a potion grenade into the middle of the room.

  “What are you doing?” Louis-Cesare yelled, grabbing me. “No magic, remember?”

  “I remember!” I yelled back, although I probably didn’t need to, because vamp hearing—especially first-level master vamp hearing—heals itself almost before the gunfire stops. But it was a yelling kind of moment.

  “Then what are you doing?”

  “That,” I said, as the potion’s vapors boiled around the room.

  It was a benign one, a smoke bomb meant for camouflage, but it was powerful, being designed to cover a whole block. Only it didn’t cover this one. Billowing white clouds spread everywhere—and were immediately absorbed by the magic hungry bears.

  And, oh, yeah, that made a difference.

  That made a real difference, I thought, as they did the same thing that the bird had, only they had a lot more bulk to work with. The bird had mostly grown up, and they did that, too, their big, round heads suddenly hitting the ceiling and forcing them to bend over. But they also expanded the other way—big time.

  I’d hoped for them to grow too big to maneuver in the small room, but this was ridiculous. Black, furry butts were suddenly everywhere, and getting larger. It was a sea of chubby cuteness that was already threatening to suffocate us. But at least they weren’t swiping at us anymore, possibly because they appeared as confused as everybody else by what was happening.

  And because there wasn’t room.

  The bears started fighting each other for space above our heads, but there was still spots of daylight around their chubby legs. Sarah saw her chance and took it. “The door!” she yelled, and lunged for it.

  She was going for the one on the opposite side of the room, which looked like it let out into another alley. I dove after her, while I still could, and the guys finally seemed to get the idea, too. But had we left it too late?

  Because the chub was taking over. I got halfway across the room, and found my way blocked by two giant, expanding asses. I tried going over, but they grew faster than I could leap, and I found myself bouncing back into Louis-Cesare.

  “There!” I dimly heard him yell, and we dodged to the side, while gunfire broke out on the other side of the room.

  But we couldn’t help whoever it was. We were having enough trouble squeezing our way under some rapidly expanding stomachs, and even then, Louis-Cesare had to brute-forced us a path to the door, shoving back what looked like a ton of blubber in the process. But through the enveloping love handles, I spotted a trash-strewn alley, littered with puddles from the last rain storm, and smelling like garbage.

  Nothing had ever looked better in my life!

  I started crawling for it, but before I could get there, here came Tomas.

  I decided to start liking him again, because he had a gun-loving team member under each arm, and was fighting the chub for the door. He made it, and then so did I and Louis-Cesare. We hit the concrete outside, which I strongly considered kissing, and then had to immediately run again, because a truly massive rear end had just smashed through the windows and splintered the door.

  It headed for a tattoo shop across the alley, and the next moment, a bunch of tiny tats came running out, fleeing the butt-pocalypse. I just stared at them for a moment, a bit overwhelmed in spite of myself. Until a tiny, adorable-looking bunny hopped over and nuzzled my leg.

  And then bit the crap out of it.

  Blood ran, the rabbit started growing, and Louis-Cesare smashed a foot down, grinding it into the pavement in a way that would normally have been gruesome, but all that came out from under his boot was squiggles.

  We ran.

  The team gathered at the end of the alley to catch our breaths, crowding under a dull green tarp stretched across some bamboo scaffolding because it had started raining. I was just able to hear the pitter patter of water on the green plastic overhead, which was a good sign. This was hard enough without being completely deaf.

  But something was clearly wrong, because Sarah was looking frantic. “Wait. Where’s Ranbir?”

  We looked around, and damn it, the mage was missing!

  “He was with us when we ran into the hotel,” Tomas said. It was a bit hard to watch him talk, as his face hadn’t healed yet, giving me an anatomy lesson every time he spoke. But he wasn’t wrong.

  “Was he with us in the last building, with the samurai?” Ev asked. “I don’t remember.”

  “He didn’t come into the nursery,” I said.

  Sarah nodded. “We assumed he was with you guys.”

  Louis-Cesare shook his head. “He may have been. It was difficult to keep track.”

  “And the weapon’s fire burned my eyes,” Jason added. “I couldn’t see much of anything through the smoke.”

  “Yes, we know,” Tomas said dourly. “That would explain why you kept shooting me in the ass.”

  “I did not!” It was indignant.

  Tomas turned around, and sure enough, somebody had strafed him across the backside, leaving fluttering, bloody khakis and a bunch of healed skin.

  Jason looked pointedly at Ev

  “I did not do that,” Ev said placidly.

  “How do you know?”

  “I was using this,” Ev produced my pride and joy: an AA-12 automated shotgun with its huge, round magazine. “It works better than the little bullets,” he explained.

  Tomas looked back at Jason.

  “It must have been the ricochets,” Jason insisted. “I’m an expert shot!”

  “Yes,” Tomas agreed. “I don’t think you missed my ass once.”

  “Can we get back to the point?” Sarah said. “Ranbir is missing!”

  “And?”

  “And we have to go back for him!”

  There was a sudden, uncomfortable silence.

  “He’d do it for us!” she insisted.

  “Would he?”
Tomas asked. “He’s a dark mage—”

  “He isn’t!”

  “He sort of is, though,” Ev pointed out. “He does blood magic—”

  “Chickens! He kills chickens!”

  “Have fun, then,” Tomas said, leaning against the wall and crossing his arms.

  Sarah glared at him. I had kind of gotten the impression that they were an item, since he moved to shelter her the way that Louis-Cesare did me. But it looked like there might be trouble in paradise.

  Not that it mattered. “We have to go back,” I pointed out.

  Tomas cocked an eyebrow at me. “Oh, and why would that be?”

  “Ranbir has the map.”

  Chapter Forty-Four

  Dory, Hong Kong

  We went back. It was useless, except that we discovered what happened to the samurai when they were carved into pieces. Best case scenario, they got confused and some parts ended up on the wrong bodies. In one case, that created an Indian-god-looking creature with a dozen arms, and in another, a monster where two non-matching halves had decided to come together. That left us being charged by something that walked on its hands like a circus performer, while its other pair tried to decapitate us with twin swords.

  But you notice, I said “best case”. Worst case scenario were all the other pieces, a couple hundred of them at a guess, which had decided not to bother looking for their missing bodies. They were just growing themselves new ones.

  They weren’t doing too well with that right now, but as soon as another magic cloud washed over them, we were going to have a lot more enemies. Only nobody intended to hang around for the show. Except possibly for Sarah, who was being stubborn.

  “He ran off,” Tomas said, when we stopped in a nearby side street to regroup, after the vamps hacked up the horrors. “He had the map; he lost his nerve; he ran. It’s that simple.”

  “It’s not that simple! He wouldn’t just abandon us!” she insisted.

  Tomas spread his hands. “Did you see him?”

  Sarah crossed her arms and frowned at him.