These Violent Delights

by Chloe Gong

  “But are you sure?” Kathleen urged. One part of her wanted to run home with this information immediately, tell Juliette so her cousin could gather the Scarlet forces and their pitchforks. Another part, the sensible part, knew this was not enough. They needed more. “Are you certain it was the monster, not a shadow or—”

  “I am certain,” the woman said firmly. “I am certain because a fisherman docking his boat tried to shoot at it as it lumbered along this very wharf.” She pointed forward, to the wharf that extended out into the wide, wide river, currently rumbling with activity from the docked ships. “I am certain because the bullets merely bounced off its back, clinking to the ground as if it were not a being standing upright but a god. It was a monster. I am sure of it.”

  “What happened?” Kathleen whispered. A chill swept up her neck and down her arms. She did not think it was the sea breeze. It was something far ghastlier. “What happened next?”

  The woman blinked. She seemed to come out of a slight daze, as if she had not quite noticed how intently she had gotten lost in her memory.

  “Well, that’s the thing,” she replied, frowning. “My eyesight, you see. It’s not the best. I watched the creature leap into the water and then…”

  Kathleen leaned forward. “And then…?”

  The old woman shook her head. “I do not know. Everything got a little hazy. I thought I heard skittering. It looked like the darkness out there”—she extended her arm—“was moving. Like little things were being shot into the darkness.” She shook her head again, more intensely this time. It did not look to do much, because the woman’s voice had lost all of her initial energy. “My son had returned by then with the rickshaw. I told him to go look. I told him that I thought I saw a monster in the water. He ran along the wharf to go catch it.”

  Kathleen gasped. “And… did he?”

  “No.” The woman frowned, her gaze cast out toward the Huangpu River. “He said I was talking nonsense. Said he only saw a man, swimming away. He was convinced a fisherman had simply fallen off his boat.”

  A man. How could there have been a man in the water while the monster was there? How could he have survived?

  Unless…

  With a shuddering breath, the woman picked her bag up, then seemed to think twice, reaching out to grip Kathleen’s hand instead.

  “I recognize you from within the Scarlet Gang’s ranks,” she said quietly. “There’s something stirring to life in the waters that surround this city. There’s something stirring to life in so many places we cannot see.” The elderly woman’s fingers tightened until Kathleen could no longer feel her circulation within her palm.

  “Please,” the woman whispered. “Protect us.”

  Fifteen

  Days later, Juliette could think of little else but the madness. She hardly reacted anymore when people called her name. She had ears only for the sound of screaming, and each time screams rang through the streets, she winced, wishing—aching to do something about it.

  A monster, Juliette thought, her thoughts persistent in its cyclic loop as she leaned against the staircase in wait. There’s a monster spreading madness on the streets of Shanghai.

  “Ready to go?” Lord Cai called down to her, pausing at the top to straighten the collar of his coat.

  Juliette forced herself back into the present. Sighing, she twirled the little clutch bag in her hands.

  “Ready as ever.”

  Lord Cai descended the rest of the stairs, then stopped in front of his daughter, his expression set in a frown. Juliette looked down at herself, trying to determine what had drawn his disapproval. She was wearing her American dresses again, this one slightly fancier to fit the occasion, with bundles of tulle at her shoulders that fell into sleeves. Was the neckline too low-cut? Was this—for once—normal fatherly concern that wasn’t about whether she could kill a man without flinching?

  “Where’s your mask?”

  Close enough. I’ll take it.

  “Why bother?” Juliette sighed. “You’re not wearing one.”

  Lord Cai scrubbed at his eyes. Juliette couldn’t tell if it was his general tiredness in preparing to deal with the Frenchmen, or if he was exasperated with her childish behavior.

  “Yes, because I am a fifty-year-old man,” her father replied. “It would look ridiculous.”

  Juliette shrugged, then started for the front door. “You said it, not me.”

  The night was brisk when they stepped out into the driveway, and Juliette shivered slightly, rubbing her hands against her bare arms. No matter. It was too late to go back for a coat now. She climbed into the car with the chauffeur’s help and slid down the seat to make room for her father. Most of their other family members who were attending the masquerade had already left. Juliette hadn’t wanted to go anyway, so she had waited while Lord Cai took his time finishing up his work. He had only declared that it was time to get going when the sky turned pink and the burning orange sun started to brush the horizon.

  Lord Cai got into the car. Once he settled himself into his seat, he rested his hands in his lap and glanced over at Juliette. His expression set into another frown. This time he was eyeing the necklace laced tightly across her throat.

  “That’s not a necklace, is it?”

  “It is not, Bàba.”

  “That’s garrote wire, isn’t it?”

  “Indeed it is, Bàba.”

  “How many other weapons have you concealed on yourself?”

  “Five, Bàba.”

  Lord Cai pinched the bridge of his nose and muttered, “Wǒde māyā, have mercy on my soul.”

  Juliette smiled like she had been complimented.

  Their car started forward and rumbled along smoothly, driving through the calmer, rural roads and into the city, honking every three seconds for the laborers and the men dragging rickshaws to get out of the way. Juliette usually made a habit not to look out the window, lest she make eye contact and a beggar approached. But for some inexplicable reason, she looked up tonight.

  Right in time to see a woman bawling on the sidewalk, cradling a body in her lap.

  The body was a bloody mess, hands stained red and throat so messy that its head was barely hanging on by the force of the neck bone. The crying woman cradled the head, pressed her cheek to its deathly white face.

  The car started to move again. Juliette turned her gaze to the front, to the passing blur of the windshield in the front seat, and swallowed hard.

  Why is this happening? she thought desperately. Has this city committed such awful sins that we have come to deserve this?

  The answer was: yes. But it wasn’t entirely their fault. The Chinese had built the pit, gathered the wood, and lit the match, but it was the foreigners who had come in and poured gasoline upon every surface, letting Shanghai rage into an untamable forest fire of debauchery.

  “Here we are,” the chauffeur said, braking.

  Juliette, her jaw tight, got out of the car. In the French Concession, everything was a little bit shiny, even the grass beneath her feet. These gardens were usually gated, but they had been pulled wide open tonight specifically for this function. When Juliette walked through the gates, it was as if she had entered another world—one far from the dirty streets and tightly cramped alleyways that they had just driven through. Here it was greenery and climbing vines and slick intentions, little gazebos sitting patiently in quaint nooks and the darkness pulling in, pulling the shadows of the tall, wrought-iron gates that bordered this garden long into the grass, growing longer with every second of the violet sunset.

  Despite the chill, Juliette was sweating a little as she browsed the crowds of people dispersed across these delicately kept gardens. Her first order of business was identifying where every relative had situated themselves. She found most of them easily, scattered about and socializing. Perhaps she had taken it a bit too far to bring so many weapons. Because of the knife strapped to the small of her back, her dress was too tight at her waist, and the white fabri
c at her knees was bunching up with every step. But Juliette couldn’t help herself. By bringing weapons, she could fool herself into thinking she could act if disaster struck.

  She tried not to acknowledge that there were some disasters she couldn’t fight off with her knives. The foreigners here certainly did not care. As Juliette walked, she overheard more than one giggle about the rumors of madness, British men and Frenchwomen alike clinking their glasses in celebration regarding how intelligent it was to stay out of the local hysteria. They acted like it was a choice.

  “Come, Juliette,” Lord Cai prompted from ahead, straightening his sleeves.

  Juliette followed obediently, but her eyes remained elsewhere. Under a delicate marble pavilion, a quartet was playing soft music, the sound floating toward a clearing where some foreign merchants and their wives were dancing. There was an even ratio of Scarlet gangsters and foreigners in attendance—merchants and officials alike—and a few were going so far as to be conversing in the fading twilight. She spotted Tyler within those groups, chatting with a Frenchwoman. When he saw her looking, he waved pleasantly. Juliette’s mouth soured into a line.

  Nearby, the strings of lights looped across the gazebo awnings flared to life with a sudden whoosh. The gardens became illuminated with gold, pushing out the darkness that would have otherwise crept in when the sun settled completely into the sea.

  “Juliette,” Lord Cai prompted again. Juliette had slowed her walk to a snail’s crawl without noticing. Begrudgingly, she picked up her pace. She had noted that most of the attendants remained in groups with those to whom they were alike. British women who had moved here with their diplomat husbands laughed with one another, their laced gloves swirling their pastel parasols. French officers clapped one another on the back, howling over whatever unfunny joke one of their superiors just told. Yet dispersed in different sections of the garden, three loners stood unassociated despite their best efforts to look as if they were occupied in proper business.

  Juliette stopped again. She cocked her head at one of them—the one who was intensely examining the plate in his hands.

  “Bàba, doesn’t that boy look Korean to you?”

  Lord Cai didn’t even follow the direction of her gaze. He put his hands around her shoulders and nudged her in the direction they were going. “Focus, Juliette.”

  It was a moot command. Juliette didn’t require any focus when they approached the Consul-General of France because when the men spoke, she simply faded into the background. She was barely more than an ornament decorating the place. She tuned in and out of the main conversation, not even catching the Consul-General’s name. Her focus was on the two men standing at attention behind him.

  “Do you want to get a sandwich afterward?” the first man whispered to the second in French. “I hate this catering. They’re trying too hard to appeal to that bland country across the ditch.”

  “You spoke my mind,” the second responded quietly. “Would you look at them? A bunch of unrefined peasants.”

  Juliette had tensed, but with the remark about the ditch, it was clear that they were referring to the British, not the Scarlet Gang.

  “They sip away on their tea and claim they invented it,” the second man continued. “Think again, fool. The Chinese were brewing tea before you even had a king.”

  Juliette snorted suddenly—the irrelevant pettiness of the conversation completely taking her by surprise—then coughed to mask the sound. Lord Cai had nothing to worry about; bringing her here had been an unnecessary precaution. She turned her attention back to her father’s conversation.

  “They are wary, my lord,” the Consul-General was saying. He spoke of his French businessmen, Juliette guessed. “The garde municipale keeps the French Concession safe for now, but if there is any trouble brewing, I need to know that I have the support of the Scarlet Gang.”

  If there was a revolt from the common Chinese people, from the unpaid workers who decided Communism was the prime solution, the French needed a way to maintain their hold on Shanghai. They thought they could obtain it with the weaponry and resources of the Scarlet Gang. They didn’t quite realize that if there was a revolution, there would be no one left in Shanghai for them to do their business with.

  But Lord Cai voiced none of that. He agreed easily, under the condition that the Scarlet Gang still had the jurisdiction to run their errands in the French Concession. The Consul-General of France exclaimed, in an attempt to mold his English with Americanisms, “Why, old friend, of course! That is not even in question,” and when the two men shook hands, it seemed all was settled.

  Juliette thought the whole thing theatrical and ridiculous. She thought it preposterous that her father had to ask permission to run business on land their ancestors had lived and died on from men who had simply docked their boat here and decided they would like to be in charge now.

  The Consul-General of France, as if he could detect the hostility of Juliette’s thoughts, at last turned his gaze to her.

  “And how are you, Miss Juliette?”

  Juliette smiled widely.

  “You shouldn’t get a say here.” She was speaking before her father could stop her, her words dripping so sweetly that they sounded like admiration. “However flawed we are, however much we fight each other, this country is still not for people like you to dictate.”

  The Consul-General’s bright expression faltered, but only slightly, unable to determine if Juliette was taking a dig or making an innocent remark. Her words were sharp but her eyes were friendly, her hands clasped together like she was making small talk.

  “Have a good day,” Lord Cai cut in before any of the French could formulate a response. He steered Juliette away firmly, marching her by her shoulders.

  “Juliette,” Lord Cai hissed the moment they were out of earshot. “I didn’t think I had to teach you this, but you cannot say things like that to powerful people. It will be the death of you.”

  Juliette shook her shoulders out of her father’s grasp.

  “Surely not,” she argued. “He is powerful, but he does not have the power to kill me.”

  “Very well,” Lord Cai said firmly. “He may not kill you—”

  “Then why can I not speak freely?”

  Her father sighed. He breathed in, then breathed out, searching for his answer.

  “Because,” he said finally, “it hurts his feelings, Juliette.”

  Juliette folded her arms. “We stay quiet about the injustice of all this simply because it hurts his feelings?”

  Lord Cai shook his head. He took his daughter by the elbow to lead her farther away, sparing a long look over his shoulder. When they were near one of the gazebos, he let go and clasped his hands before him.

  “These days, Juliette,” he said, low and warily, “the most dangerous people are the powerful white men who feel as if they have been slighted.”

  Juliette knew this. She knew this far more than people like her father and mother, who had only ever seen what the foreigners were capable of after they sailed their ships into Chinese waters. But Juliette—her parents had sent her off to America to be educated, after all. She had grown up with an eye pinned to the outside of every establishment before she walked in, searching for the segregation signs that demanded she keep out. She had learned to move out of the way whenever a white lady in heels was coming down the sidewalk with her pearls, learned to fake meekness and lower her gaze in the event that the white lady’s husband would note the slight roll of Juliette’s eyes and yell after her, demanding to know why she was in this country and what her problem was.

  She didn’t have to do a single thing in offense. It was the entitlement that drove these men forward. Entitlement that encouraged their wives to place a delicate handkerchief to their nose and sniff, wholeheartedly believing the tirade was deserved. They believed themselves the rulers of the world—on stolen land in America, on stolen land in Shanghai.

  Everywhere they went—entitlement.

  And Juli
ette was so tired.

  “Everyone gets their feelings hurt,” she said bitterly. “While he’s here, he can experience it for once in his life. He doesn’t deserve to have power. It’s not his right.”

  “I know,” Lord Cai said simply. “All of China knows. But this is the way the world works now. For as long as he has power, we need him. For as long as he has the most guns, he holds the power.”

  “It is not as if we do not have guns,” Juliette grumbled anyway. “It is not as if we have not had an iron grip on Shanghai for the last century with our guns.”

  “Once it was enough,” Lord Cai replied. “Now it is not.”

  The French needed them, but the Scarlet Gang did not need the French in the same way. What her father meant in actuality was that they needed French power—they needed to stay on their good side. If the Scarlet Gang were to declare war and take back the French Concession as Chinese territory, they would be destroyed in hours. Loyalty and gang hierarchy was nothing against warships and torpedoes. The Opium Wars had proved that.

  Juliette made a sound of disgust. Seeing her father’s stern expression, she sighed and diverted the topic back to what was important. “Never mind. I heard nothing of interest from his men.”

  Lord Cai nodded. “That is fortunate. It means less trouble for us. Go enjoy yourself.”

  “Sure,” Juliette said. By that she meant, I’m getting food and then I’m leaving. She had spotted Paul Dexter coming through the gates. He was searching through the crowd. “I’ll be hiding—” Juliette coughed. “Pardon me, I’ll be hovering by that tree.”

  Unfortunately, despite how quickly Juliette paced away, she still wasn’t fast enough.

  “Miss Cai, what a pleasant surprise.”

  Having reached the food table, Juliette set her clutch down and primly picked up an egg tart. She took a nibble, then turned around, facing the human equivalent of stale bread.

  “How have you been?” Paul asked. He clasped his hands behind his back, stretching the blue fabric of his tailored suit. He wasn’t wearing a mask, either. His green eyes blinked at her unfettered, reflecting the golden lights above them.