“Sorry about that,” he said sincerely. “We just got a new department chairman, and his solution to everything seems to be to change how things’ve been done for the twenty years I’ve been here, whether it’s a good idea or not. Swear to God, man, academic politics makes the folks in Washington look like pikers.” He took a breath and held out his hand. “Sorry— I’m Marcus Wallace. You must be John Winchester.”
John accepted the firm handshake.
“I guess you talked to Bobby after we spoke?”
Wallace nodded.
“So the hook sword didn’t work as advertised?”
“That’s an understatement,” John said somewhat bitterly.
“Take it easy, man—it isn’t Bobby’s fault. Ever since Doragon Kokoro first showed up, some twenty years back, I’ve been trying to find out everything I could. I helped Bartow out, and since then, I’ve been doing research up the yin-yang to try to find out more. But it isn’t easy.”
He started rummaging through the papers on his desk while he continued.
“Nevertheless, I think I may have found something that might be of some use. Where is it?” After going through a few more sheafs, Wallace finally found what he was looking for. “Here it is!”
It was a booklet, about half the size of John’s own journal in breadth and width. At first he thought Wallace was handing it to him upside down and backward, before he remembered that most Asian languages were written right-to-left.
Flipping through it briefly, John saw the kanji characters, along with some line art that John might have found pretty under better circumstances.
“What the hell’m I supposed to do with this?” he asked.
Wallace shook his head quickly and grabbed the booklet back.
“Sorry, man—I forget sometimes that not everybody reads the language.” He flipped through to a back page. “Here we go.” He handed it back to John and pointed at the drawing that appeared there. “I’m guessing a picture will be worth a few thousand words.”
Again taking the booklet, John saw line art that took up the entire bottom half of the page: a man holding a very familiar-looking hook sword, crouched in a ready stance facing off against a man who was wreathed in flames while wielding a katana.
Of particular note to John was that the kanji characters on the hook sword were glowing.
Looking up, he saw that Wallace was nodding toward the book.
“If this thing’s the real deal—and I’ve been translating this sucker for a while now—then it isn’t the sword, it’s the engravings.” Turning away, he used his forearm to sweep the papers off the keyboard, and began typing. “I went ahead and wrote out the characters on the sword phonetically for you. The next time you face the spirit, you need to focus your concentration on it and then cast the engraved spell.
“My guess is that that’ll get rid of Doragon Kokoro.”
“Your guess?” John didn’t like the sound of that.
Wallace regarded him levelly.
“Look, man, you and I both know that this sort of thing doesn’t always come with an instruction manual.”
With a sigh, John relented.
“Yeah, okay.”
Rising to his feet, the professor gestured toward the door.
“C’mon, the printer’s down the hall.”
John followed him out of the cramped office and into the cramped hallway to a table that sat next to a bunch of wooden mail slots with people’s names written on small white labels affixed to the front. One of them, John noted, had Wallace’s name, there was an envelope propped up in the slot. The professor nabbed it as they walked past.
The printer was a daisy-wheel that worked very slowly, but it was still done by the time they arrived. The sheet it spat out contained only a few words.
Wallace pulled a lever that let loose the paper, and yanked it out.
“Here you go, Mr. Winchester. Hold the sword near Doragon Kokoro, chant this, and stand back.”
John took the proffered paper.
“And if that doesn’t work?”
Wallace’s face broke into a wry grin.
“Run like hell?”
John rolled his eyes.
“Thanks a lot.”
SEVENTEEN
Tommy Shin hated the fact that the Old Man had been right.
Mai-Lin had followed his instructions and provided him with a dossier of information about the Heart of the Dragon. Tommy didn’t know as much as he’d have liked, but he knew enough to take action.
To his irritation, one of those actions had to be to talk to the Old Man again. When the Old Man had proposed that a spirit had been responsible for the deaths of his lieutenants, Tommy was barely able to even consider the idea. Now he would be forced to eat his own words.
But he couldn’t deny the evidence of his own eyes. He’d seen the Heart of the Dragon in the restaurant, saw it advance upon Lin, and saw it disappear as if by magic. So Tommy had to accept that the creature truly existed. Which meant that once again he had to ask the Old Man for help.
The wild card in all this was the white man with the sword. Tommy had no idea what to make of him—and that didn’t sit well. On the one hand, the gaijin had brought that strange sword into the restaurant. On the other, he’d risked his own life to defend Lin—a perfect stranger.
Why would he do something like that? Tommy wondered. What does he stand to gain?
He also seemed to have expected the Heart of the Dragon to appear. Why else would he bring a sword into Shin’s Delight in the first place?
Still, until he learned more about the man, there was nothing Tommy could do about him. Other preparations, however, could be made—and had been.
Tommy summoned Benny and Al to his office, and both men showed up almost immediately.
“Have a seat,” he said, indicating the two guest chairs that sat in front of his desk. “I’ve received a report about the Heart of the Dragon—the flaming warrior—since it appeared in the restaurant downstairs.”
Al seemed to become agitated.
“So have I,” he said without waiting to be asked, “and I think it was that ga—uh, that foreigner who summoned it in the first place.”
Benny turned to peer at him.
“Why would you think that?” he demanded. “Everyone I spoke to said that he seemed to be fighting it.”
“It’s obvious!” Al stared back at Benny as if to imply that he was an idiot. “The foreigner came in here carrying a sword! People don’t do that sort of thing unless they plan to use them. I’ll bet he called up the demon so that it would help him with whatever twisted plot he planned to carry out.”
“Then why fight it as he did?” Benny asked.
Al shrugged.
“Who knows? Maybe it got out of control. That would explain why it went after Lin. I mean, Lin isn’t anybody important, after all.” He turned to face Tommy. “No, I think he was after you, and the reason he revealed himself when he did was in order to stop it from killing the wrong person.” He looked very smug at his own reasoning.
Tommy nodded, considering what had been said.
“It’s not a bad theory, Al,” he admitted.
A knock came from the doorway. The door was open, and Mike Zhang—one of the bodyguards from downstairs—was standing there.
“Excuse me, boss? We got somebody.”
Tommy waved his hand to indicate that Mike should enter.
“Come in, come in,” he said eagerly.
Mike stepped into the office, followed by Jack Wu and an unshaven white man wearing a bomber jacket. Jack stood six-foot-eight, with massive shoulders.
Mike held up a hand to reveal a hook sword.
“Well well well,” Tommy said, walking around his desk to face the foreigner, “returned to the scene of the crime, have you?”
Jack had huge hands with which he held the foreigner’s shoulders in a crushing grip. Despite this, the white man was defiant.
“I’m not the one who’s committing a
crime here,” he said with conviction.
“Who are you?” Tommy demanded.
“Name’s John Winchester—and I ain’t here to cause you any harm.”
At that Al stood up and placed himself next to his boss.
“You’re lying!” he said in a voice that was a little too high. “You’re trying to destroy the Triads, starting with Tommy, aren’t you? You think he’s weak, but you’re wrong!”
Winchester just smiled at him. It was a disturbing smile, because it was at once both completely wild and frighteningly sane. This, Tommy quickly realized, was someone who’d stared into the abyss.
He had seen that look only once before—on the Old Man.
“There’s only one thing I’m tryin’ to destroy, son, and it’s not in this room.”
Al turned to Tommy.
“You should kill him now, before he destroys you!”
Now it was Tommy’s turn to smile.
“Oh, I may very well kill him, Al,” he said calmly. “But not because he summoned the Heart of the Dragon.”
“What are you talking about?” Al asked, and the blood drained from his face.
Tommy started to pace back and forth between the movie posters on the wall.
“Mai-Lin’s research revealed a great deal about the Heart of the Dragon, including something you left out of your little report,” he said. “You see, the creature is the damned spirit of an ancient warrior, Yoshio Nakadai, and John Winchester here cannot possibly have brought him back to the land of the living. No, that can only be done by a blood relative—a descendent of the ronin.”
He turned to stare right at Al.
“Her information was very thorough. And since Yoshio Nakadai was Japanese, there’s only one person I can think of who could possibly qualify. Someone who himself is half-Japanese, and might start to call a foreigner ‘gaijin’ before correcting himself. Someone who has ambitions within the Triads. Someone who never got along with Lin.”
At first panic swept across Al’s features, and he glanced around the room as if to seek a way out.
Then his shoulders slumped, and he looked back at his boss.
“Very well, Tommy. You got me.”
Before anyone could react, however, he muttered something under his breath.
Tommy felt the heat warm his face almost instantly.
There, in the middle of the room, was the Heart of the Dragon, looking just as he had downstairs.
“How the hell—?” Benny said, rising to his feet and backing away instinctively. He pulled out his Beretta.
Tommy and his bodyguards were frozen with fear. Winchester, who was still held in Jack’s grip, was the only one who seemed to have kept his wits about him.
“He must’ve cast most of the spell before he came in here,” he shouted. “What he just said had to’ve ended it.”
“Very good,” Al smiled, like a teacher praising a clever pupil.
Benny pulled the trigger three times, but the bullets evaporated instantly in the flames.
The Heart of the Dragon raised his katana.
Benny was about to shoot Al instead of the creature, but before he could do anything, Winchester started muttering some words of his own in Japanese.
As he did so, the lettering started to glow on the sword in Mike’s hands.
Without warning the fiery spirit leaned his head back and screamed, his katana still raised. It was a hollow, agonizing sound—only vaguely human. The fire started to burn brighter, and Tommy had to shield his eyes from the glare.
Then the flames dwindled to nothing, and the spirit was gone.
Al cried out in anger.
Tommy gestured to Benny, who got the idea immediately and pointed his Beretta at Al.
Winchester moved quickly, however, elbowing Jack hard in the gut, then punching him in the face with the back of his fist. A kick of his booted heel caught Jack in the groin, and as the bodyguard doubled over, Winchester took a swing at Mike. One punch did the trick.
He always did have a glass jaw, Tommy thought absently. As Mike hit the floor, the Caucasian scooped up his sword.
Tommy never carried a gun—that was what he had guys like Mike and Jack for. Since Benny was aiming at Al, that freed Winchester to bolt for the door.
“Boss?” Benny asked, not taking his eyes off Al.
“Let him go,” Tommy said, having fully regained his composure. “He’s not our enemy. If he comes back, I’ll deal with him then.” He ran a hand through his spiked hair and turned to Al.
“You, however, I’ll deal with right now.”
Defiant to the last, though with nowhere near the conviction Winchester had shown, Al responded.
“Go ahead and do your worst, Tommy. Tell Benny to shoot me.”
“If you don’t shut up, I will shoot you, you half-breed piece of crap,” Benny said.
“Like I said, go ahead. I have nothing more to say to you.”
Tommy considered this.
“You may believe that, Al, but I don’t. You see, you could be very valuable to me. After all, you know how to summon the Heart of the Dragon.”
“Not anymore,” Al said bitterly. “That—that gaijin banished the spirit. He’s gone.”
Shrugging, Tommy gestured to Benny.
“All right, then, shoot him.”
With a grin, Benny squeezed the trigger three times, emptying his clip into Al’s chest. He fell to the floor of the office, blood pluming from the wounds.
Tommy turned his attention to Jack and Mike.
“You two all right?”
Jack nodded, looking flushed with embarrassment, but Mike was still insensate on the floor. Benny shook his head as he ejected the clip from his Beretta and replaced it with a new one. It slid into the grip with a solid click.
Tommy was thinking that he needed to put Mai-Lin on this John Winchester person—find out who he was, and where he came from. Clearly he had considerable knowledge and resources, of the sort Tommy thought he would, perhaps, be able to use.
He looked at Jack, who was kneeling down next to Mike.
Mike, in turn, was beginning to regain consciousness. He moaned loudly.
“Jack, get up and call Doctor Jiang. We’ll need to have him dispose of Al’s body.”
“Owww!”
Whirling around, Tommy froze. They all did.
Al was getting up from the floor.
Blood still stained the front of his shirt, encircling the holes made by the bullets, but through those holes, Tommy only saw smooth, unbroken skin.
“What the hell?”
Smoothing his clothing as best he could, Al just stared at him, a huge grin appearing on his face.
“You’re not gonna need Jiang for me, Tommy. And you’re gonna want to keep me around, too. Remember how I said the Heart of the Dragon was banished? Well, one thing I didn’t say was that it would be forever.”
But before he could continue, Benny shot him again, this time in the shoulder.
Al stumbled back against the wall, then snarled and reached out to grab the gun from Benny’s grip.
“Damn it, Benny, that hurts!”
Even as he pulled the weapon from Benny’s hand, Jack got to his feet and put two bullets in Al’s back, spinning him around. They burst out through his belly, spraying blood all over the Lethal Weapon 2 poster.
But Al didn’t fall down this time, though he was doubled over when he whirled around, aimed Benny’s Beretta, and shot Jack twice in the chest.
Jack most definitely did fall over.
Benny leapt forward, trying to grab the gun back. Four hands wrapped around the Beretta’s grip, fumbling desperately in an attempt to move it one way or the other, fingers trying to slide in to get purchase on the trigger.
At first they seemed evenly matched. Tommy didn’t dare move closer for fear of getting shot himself. At one point the gun aimed right at him, and he ducked behind his desk.
Eventually Benny managed to get the upper hand, pushing the barrel agains
t Al’s chest.
With a deafening report, the weapon fired, and Al screamed.
Benny smiled. Thinking himself victorious, he relaxed his grip on the Beretta.
As soon as he did so, Al shoved the gun under Benny’s chin and squeezed the trigger.
Brain matter and skull fragments splattered across the ceiling, and even as the body hit the floor, Al turned to Tommy. His shirt was shredded now, and completely drenched in blood, but where the skin was broken, the wounds were healing even as Tommy stared.
The smile that crossed his face now scared Tommy even more than Winchester’s had. There was a madness that hadn’t been there before.
“All you had to do was give me more authority,” Al said grimly. “That’s why I killed those three idiots— Teng, Li, and Lao. And these two.” Then he turned to Mike, who was still half out of it on the floor, and shot him twice in the back. “And him.
“None of them were going to help you, Tommy. I could’ve helped you. Now I’m just gonna have to help myself. By the time I’m able to summon the Heart of the Dragon again, I’ll be the most powerful man in Chinatown.”
Tommy sneered at him the way the Old Man had always sneered at Tommy.
“You think you’re better than me, but you’re just a fool who got lucky.”
“And I’m about to get luckier.”
The last thing Tommy Shin ever heard was the report that sent a bullet into his brain.
EIGHTEEN
When Nakadai met his death at the hands of the demon, the experience was indescribable agony. Yet even as the flames roared, burning his flesh away from the bone, as the fires drove the life from his body, he knew that the demon had a plan that stretched far beyond turning a peaceful town into a bloodthirsty mob.
The intensity of the pain eventually caused him to lose consciousness—for the final time, he prayed. And once the agony disappeared, there wasn’t anything to replace it, simply a void of nothingness. For the briefest of moments, Nakadai imagined he had found the peace he had sought ever since the dark days of his former master’s disgrace.
That moment of hope, however, was fleeting.
The fires that killed him returned. While he did not feel their heat or their destructive power, somehow they transported him back to the land of the living.
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