Supernatural Heart of the Dragon

by Keith R. A. DeCandido

  He also saw the kanji characters etched onto the blade.

  “Magic sword?”

  Bobby shook his head.

  “Nah, just a fancy label. The characters just mean ‘Pierce the heart of the dragon.’”

  “How do you know?” John asked.

  In response, Bobby reeled off several phrases in what sounded like Japanese.

  “Oh,” John said lamely. He should have known better than to assume that there was something Bobby didn’t know. “I’m guessin’ you just told me to screw off and die,” he added.

  “Somethin’ like that,” Bobby replied, grinning. “And that’s all you got to do—run this through the heart of the dragon. End of story—at least for now.” Then the grin fell. “Look, I’ll take a gander at the Impala’s engine, get her good as new while you’re gone.”

  “How’m I supposed to get there? Especially with that.” He gestured at the sword.

  “Take a plane,” Bobby said. “I’ll ship the sword, and it’ll be there waiting when you arrive in San Francisco.”

  “Okay, that could work.” John hadn’t thought of that. But then again, Bobby had a legitimate and regular source of income. Just buying a plane ticket and shipping stuff you couldn’t get through airline security tended to be outside of John’s budget. He was struggling enough just to keep the Impala going, especially with gas over a dollar a gallon.

  Bobby explained that Doragon Kokoro was the spirit of a ronin that had been brought back by a half-Chinese, half-Japanese man named Albert Chao. A spell had been cast by a hunter—from what Bobby heard, it was a man named Jack Bartow—that banished the spirit for twenty years. And that was exactly two decades back.

  “What happened to the hunter who cast the spell?”

  “Bartow? He died later on, savin’ a couple from a vengeance spirit that was hauntin’ ‘em. I met him right after I started in the business, and he left me a bunch of his stuff—including this.”

  With that he hefted the sword.

  “Where’d he find it?” John asked.

  “Got it from a fella at Berkeley, in the Oriental Studies Department. Guy helped Bartow out twenty years ago, along with a couple of other hunters, then came across this and figured Bartow would know what to do with it when Doragon Kokoro came back. Now we got us some dead folks in Chinatown, burned to a crisp and cut to ribbons.”

  “Chinatown?” John rubbed his stubble-covered chin. “I thought this was a Japanese spirit.”

  “It is—like I said, Chao’s a half-breed. Don’t know much beyond that.” Then he peered intently at his friend. “You sure you wanna do this? I can probably head on down to Harvelle’s, find someone who could handle it. Couple days won’t make that much difference.”

  John didn’t answer at first. Instead, he looked over at Dean and Sam in the dining room, playing that oh-so-common game of “I touched you last.”

  Christmas was coming up, and he did want to spend it with the boys....

  But if all that was needed was for this sword to penetrate the Heart of the Dragon—like it said on the blade—then the job would only take a couple of days. He’d be back in plenty of time.

  “Burned to a crisp, you said.”

  Then the image came back into his head.

  His wife Mary, pinned to the ceiling, blood pooling outward from her stomach, fire surrounding and consuming her.

  He’d dedicated his life to finding out who or what did that. True, he had other reasons for hunting—people were dying at the hands of monsters that most refused to believe really existed.

  At the age of eighteen, John Winchester had been drafted by the U.S. Marine Corps, but had gone willingly, because he believed what his superiors in the Corps taught him: that being a Marine would save lives. A year in Vietnam had cured him of that notion, but the urge was still there.

  Yet the saving of lives was like a side benefit. Because when he did return from ‘Nam, he did so with but a single thought: I want to spend the rest of my life with Mary Campbell. And for ten years he did, until that thing—demon, monster, whatever it was—took her away from him.

  No, his true reason for hunting—the reason that drove him, day in and day out—was to find out what had killed his wife and destroy it once and for all.

  Perhaps the Heart of the Dragon would provide another clue to where he could find it, and finally achieve the vengeance for which his heart had cried out for the past six years.

  John turned to Bobby with renewed resolve.

  “So what time’s my flight?”

  TWELVE

  Tommy Shin really hated having to deal with the Old Man.

  Unfortunately, he didn’t really have much of a choice. The Old Man still commanded respect among the people with whom he did business. There was simply no way Tommy would be able to keep his crack cocaine supplier without the Old Man’s help. And there wasn’t a person in Chinatown who didn’t owe the Old Man a favor.

  So Tommy put up with him—but only because he had no choice.

  Some day, he promised himself, he’d finally have the respect he deserved, and be able to put the Old Man out to pasture. For now, though, he needed him.

  Especially with everything else that was going on.

  Tommy called the Old Man into his office, which was located above the Shin’s Delight restaurant on Pacific Avenue in San Francisco’s Chinatown neighborhood. As usual, the Old Man sneered at him as he walked in. When this had been the Old Man’s office, it was decorated with paintings and artifacts from China.

  But Tommy hadn’t liked that. So when the office became his, he put up framed posters instead—of movies like Batman and Lethal Weapon 2 and bands like REM and Public Enemy. He had even repainted the walls.

  Tourists expected a Chinese restaurant to have red walls with gold trim, and it didn’t do to alienate the tourists—not as long as they had money. But Tommy had insisted that his office be redone in black. He’d read a magazine article about how dark walls made people nervous, and Tommy liked people to be nervous when they were in his presence.

  Now the Old Man looked at the movie and music posters with that disdain of his, then he turned it on Tommy.

  While the Old Man’s paper-white hair was done in an ordinary bowl-cut, Tommy had his moussed and spiked; and where the Old Man wore traditional Chinese garments, Tommy had on a white linen jacket, with the sleeves rolled three-quarters up his arm, over a dark-blue polo shirt with the collar turned up.

  “You continue to disrespect our traditions.”

  That was what the Old Man always said when he saw Tommy, and he said it in Mandarin, of course.

  Tommy’s response was just as rote, though he spoke in English.

  “Those traditions remain in China. We’re in America now. We should act like it.”

  The Old Man sat in the guest chair across from Tommy and continued to speak in Mandarin.

  “I assume that you didn’t summon me here so I could remind you what an imbecile you are.”

  Smiling, Tommy decided to indulge the Old Man and continue the conversation in Mandarin.

  “Not that I don’t enjoy it, but yes, there is a reason.” He opened the top drawer of his desk and retrieved a manila folder. Handing it to the Old Man, he said, “We have a problem. I could use your advice on how to fix it.”

  Taking the folder, the Old Man snorted.

  “Now you wish for my advice?”

  “I always want your advice on things that matter,” Tommy said, still smiling. Then he let the smile fall, for this was serious business. “Three of my lieutenants are dead. That is a copy of the police file—I got it from my cop on the inside.”

  “Why do you take such absurd risks?” the Old Man asked. “The police are not to be trusted.”

  “I pay this one good money to provide me with intelligence,” Tommy said with a scowl. “It’s useful.”

  “It’s a waste of money. The police know nothing of our ways, so they cannot enforce their laws on our people. By adopting their
ways, you make it easier for them to complicate our operations. And by putting one on your payroll, you risk discovery.”

  Tommy leaned forward, his hands flat on the wooden desk.

  “Profits are up since I took over, and the only arrests have been of low-level workers who know nothing of consequence. I know what I’m doing.”

  Now the Old Man smiled.

  “Then why do you need my help?”

  Tommy leaned back into his chair.

  “Read the file.”

  The Old Man finally opened the manila folder, looked through it, and grimaced.

  Tommy had had much the same reaction when he first heard about the deaths of Teng, Li, and Lao. Whoever killed them had overdone it: broiling them and cutting them up. Lao’s body had been found by Tommy himself in an alley behind the restaurant. The sight had made him ill, and the subsequent vomiting had ruined a very nice pair of moccasins.

  “Someone,” Tommy said as the Old Man closed the folder, “is going to a great deal of trouble.”

  The Old Man nodded.

  “This is more than simply killing several of your lieutenants. If it was just a bullet to the back of the head, I would expect that they had done something idiotic. But this....” The Old Man sighed. “This is a power play by someone who has access to considerable resources.”

  Frustrated, Tommy threw up his hands.

  “What kind of ’resources’ could accomplish this?”

  “Ones not of this world,” the Old Man said, “but the next.”

  Tommy rolled his eyes.

  “That’s absurd.”

  “Really? Did you actually read the report your policeman friend supplied?”

  “What do you mean?”

  The Old Man opened the folder to a particular page and shoved it forward on the desk.

  “See this medical examiner’s report? The bodies had third-degree burns evenly distributed, yet there was no sign of fire anywhere near the corpses. The bodies were too fragile to be moved.”

  “So?” Tommy asked, wondering what difference any of that made.

  “So, you young idiot, these deaths were not natural.”

  Tommy laughed.

  “Then what, they’re super-natural?”

  “Do not mock me,” the Old Man said gravely. “You are too young to remember, but this has happened before. Several citizens of Chinatown were killed in just such a manner, twenty years ago. Rumor had it that the Heart of the Dragon was responsible. It is possible that he has returned.”

  Tommy rolled his eyes once again.

  “That’s just a fairy tale! I heard about that evil spirit when I was a teenager. It was stupid then, and it’s stupid now.”

  The Old Man shrugged.

  “Mock it if you wish,” he said. “They are your lieutenants being killed, so what does it matter? But it is obvious that someone has summoned the Heart of the Dragon once again. And it is just as obvious that you must find that person, and kill him before he kills you.”

  With that, the Old Man got up from his chair. Pausing once to sneer at the image of Mel Gibson and Danny Glover on the poster near the door, he turned and gave Tommy one last parting shot.

  “You think you’re better than me,” he said, “but you’re just a fool who got lucky.”

  Tommy shook his head in disgust, but didn’t bother to reply. He stabbed a finger at the intercom that would put him in touch with the foyer outside the office, where his one surviving lieutenant—Benny Hao—was waiting.

  “Get in here,” he said in English.

  Hao, broad-shouldered, well-muscled and imposing, strode into the room.

  “Yeah, boss?”

  “Tell Mai-Lin to find out whatever she can about ‘the Heart of the Dragon.’”

  For a brief instant, Benny laughed, then he saw that Tommy wasn’t sharing in the humor, and stopped.

  “You sure, boss?” he asked tentatively. “I thought that was just a story.”

  “Maybe—but I want to be certain.”

  “Uh, okay.” He started for the door, then turned. “Oh, and Al’s outside.”

  “What does he want?” Tommy snarled.

  “Said he had an appointment.”

  Just as he was about to tell Benny to shoot Al in the head, Tommy recalled that he had, in fact, made the appointment—he’d just forgotten about it in the chaos surrounding the deaths.

  “Shit,” he spat. “Fine, send the little twerp in.”

  Nodding, Benny left the room.

  Al came in a moment later, wearing a polo shirt, jeans, and moccasins of the same type as Tommy. His shoulder-length dark hair was tied back into a tiny ponytail.

  “What do you want?” Tommy asked impatiently. He could hear Benny on the phone in the foyer, talking to Mai-Lin.

  “I wanted to talk to you about my ideas for improving the collection taking.”

  Tommy blinked in confusion.

  “What?”

  “We’ve been having problems with the collections of the protection money, and I think I know why. We always collect on the first day of the month.”

  Tommy couldn’t believe he was having this conversation.

  “Al, I don’t know if you’ve been paying attention, but a bunch of our people are dead.”

  “Uh, okay. I just—” Al cleared his throat, and pressed on. “When we collect on the first day of the month, usually the owners have already deposited all their cash into their bank accounts, so claim they don’t have any in the till. If we do all the collections on the first Saturday of every month, it’ll work better. The banks are closed on Saturday, so the owners can’t say they don’t have the cash.”

  As pissed as he was at being interrupted, Tommy had to concede that it wasn’t a bad idea. Taking protection money on the first of the month was one of the Old Man’s policies, and Tommy had continued it out of habit.

  But he was more than happy to get rid of another outmoded notion.

  Now, however, was not the time.

  “Al, it’s a good idea, but not now, okay? We’ll do this next week.”

  Al looked deflated, but nodded.

  “All right, boss.”

  The man turned to leave, but Tommy stopped him.

  “Hey, you ever hear anything about something called ‘the Heart of the Dragon?’”

  Albert Chao just shrugged.

  “Nope—never heard of it.”

  THIRTEEN

  John looked around at the room he’d been given at the Emperor Norton Lodge on Ellis Street. It had probably been a nice hotel once, but the décor looked like it was straight out of the 1960s. Were John still a teenager, that would have been fine, but times had changed, and the flower-power wallpaper and garish carpet just didn’t feel right.

  The place even had a rotary phone; John hadn’t realized there were any of those left.

  Still, it was cheap, and that was what really mattered.

  It had been all right at first. He and Mary had saved plenty of money—okay, so it was originally earmarked for Dean and Sammy’s college funds, but that was less of a priority now—so after she died, he’d been able to finance his hunt for vengeance.

  But he’d had no idea it would take this long. A year or two, maybe, but not the six years he’d already spent. And there was no end in sight.

  Which meant he’d been progressively downgrading the type of hotel he was willing to stay in. Besides, cheap places like this were less intrusive, and the staff asked fewer questions.

  The money he saved on lodging went to weapons and ammo and other equipment. Not to mention food, gas for the Impala, and paying for that storage unit in upstate New York.

  Sooner or later, the bank account was going to run dry. But John was already practicing a few tricks that would enable him to keep going....

  One advantage to this particular dump was its proximity to Chinatown, where the three murders he knew of had taken place.

  As promised, Bobby’s package was waiting for him upon arrival, and he set it down
on the rickety desk that stood against one wall of the room.

  Just a day earlier, Dean had helped him put the package together. Dean tended to wield Bobby’s tape gun like it was a weapon, which John had found at once charming and unfortunate. He knew that the boys needed to know how to defend themselves. Even if they found the thing that killed Mary, he doubted it would end there.

  John knew too much about how the world really worked, Dean was starting to learn, as well—and it wouldn’t be long before Sammy would find out, though John still held out some hope that his six year-old might have something resembling a normal life.

  If he could find Mary’s killer soon.

  Yet as he brought the heavy package into the hotel room, he wondered if the quest would ever end.

  He thought about the Heart of the Dragon as he ripped the box open, and the fact that the hunter who had stopped it before—this Bartow guy—had died. John would never be able to find out what he knew. And that raised a disturbing possibility that he tried not to think about too much.

  What if some other hunter had come along and killed the thing that took Mary away? John would never even know. It wasn’t as if there was a hunter’s newsletter or anything, and the folks at places like the Roadhouse weren’t exactly forthcoming with details of their hunts. Boasts, yes, tall tales, certainly, but actual solid information was hard to come by.

  So someone might have killed the thing that took Mary, and no one would ever know. Monsters didn’t generally provide resumés of their previous kills.

  There was a very real chance that John’s hunt was entirely pointless.

  But it didn’t matter. Because he couldn’t stop on the basis of a random possibility. He needed to find what had killed Mary, and destroy it. Until that day, there would be no respite.

  One of the most important lessons Daniel Elkins had taught him was that the first step of any hunt was to gather information. It was something of a miracle that John hadn’t gotten himself killed in his first few months of hunting, because what he hadn’t known back then could fill volumes.

  So his next step was to visit the San Francisco Public Library’s main branch at the Civic Center. He took the bus there, since his car was back in South Dakota, and that gave him the opportunity to see the City by the Bay.