by Alyc Helms
“Jian Huo was the one who discovered what you were doing,” I forged on. “He tried to talk to you, to understand why you were doing it. He tried to stop you, but you were too far gone. When the others found out – when Jian Huo told them – they exiled you. Since then, you’ve involved yourself even more deeply in mortal affairs. Most of the atrocities of this past century – Mao, the Red Guard – you were involved in all of that.”
“Ah yes. The Long March.” He smiled fondly, as though that terrible exodus were a happy memory. “But later, the good chairman took exception to my existence and decided my kind needed to be eradicated. He was remarkably dedicated in his efforts, if ultimately ineffectual. The Triads were a useful buffer.”
Ineffectual, he called it. Hundreds of thousands dead, ancient monasteries and cultural sites destroyed, a whole nation terrorized for half a century and still recovering from the impact of Mao’s policies, and he was able to shrug all this off. Jian Huo was right. Lung Di was a monster.
He ignored my look of revulsion in favor of digging in. When I didn’t continue after a few moments, he set down his fork again. “An interesting version of the events.”
“Are you going to try to deny it?”
“No, no. It’s all true. Much less damning than I expected. It appears my brother is loath to admit just how reprehensible I am. Or maybe he still harbors some affection for me.” Lung Di looked up and scratched his jaw. “No. It’s almost certainly the former.”
He leaned back again and favored me with a lazy smile. Here it came. Manifesto time. I steeled myself.
“I’m going to make an intuitive leap and guess that you’re not an ‘ends justify the means’ sort, are you?”
“No. Because they don’t. In the doing of a thing, the how and the why matters.”
“Now, where have I heard that before?” he drawled. I shifted uncomfortably. Just because I was parroting Jian Huo’s words didn’t mean I didn’t believe them.
Lung Di’s smirk dimmed. “But how does that work when you’re up against something that has the power to crush you without a thought? Worse, something that will use your weakness to further its agenda? You can’t just defeat such monsters with hugs and positive thinking. Your Gandhi and your King, their peaceful protests succeeded because they were already part of the elite classes. They were equipped with the weapons of social capital and rhetoric. But what about those who are not? What about those for whom the only recourse is desperate violence? Like your Middle Eastern terrorists, or those Zapatistas in Central America? Or your own Irish people a century ago? Your philosopher, Nietzsche, observed that if you fight monsters, you become a monster yourself. What if it is more than that? When the monsters are so much more powerful, your only hope to defeat them is to become a monster. But it can be done. That’s what I’ve learned in my centuries of pitting humans against each other. It is something that none of my siblings is willing to admit about humans, not even Lung Huang, who knows you best. You lot can be more powerful than gods, given the right incentive.”
I gaped at him, blinking to make sure I understood. “That’s it? That’s your justification? You’ve been doing us some kind of cosmic service, testing us to prove that we can be as powerful as any monster that we face? So that we can take their place and become our own monsters?” I threw my napkin on my plate. “That’s the crappiest manifesto I’ve ever heard!”
“You know nothing about monsters.”
If I’d been smarter, I would have taken heed of the warning in his quiet tone. But I’m not that smart. “Oh, I think I’m learning,” I said, glaring.
“You. Know. Nothing.” He jabbed his finger into the table with each word, rattling the dishes and making the wine slosh in the glasses. “I will tell you about monsters. The fabric of reality is weakening, did my brother tell you that? Your access to the place you call the Shadow Realms is proof. In the beginning, the Nine Guardians set ourselves to protect reality, all realities, from what waited beyond. We hold back all that was separated out from reality when the cosmos came into being – all that is not-being. But we are weakening. For centuries now, things have been crawling through the spaces between the warp and the weft, getting past our guard. Monsters beyond your imagining.”
“Just because they’re from outside our reality doesn’t make them monsters. I don’t believe in othering just for othering’s sake–”
“You idiot girl! This isn’t some hippie, water-your-plants-with-menstrual-blood, save-the-whales, love-thy-neighbor crap. I’m talking about entities that cause reality to unweave by their very presence. You mortals interpret it as horror and madness because your minds can’t comprehend the unreality of it. This isn’t a case of ‘can’t we all just get along’. These monsters unmake reality.”
I tamped down on the urge to defend my hippie roots. Instead, I went for skepticism. “And you want to stop them, great humanitarian that you are?”
“No. I want to prepare you so that you can stop them.”
“Huh? Me?”
It was his turn to throw down his napkin. “Not you, personally, you silly girl. Humanity. The Triads. The People’s Heroes. Your Argent Aces. It’s past time we took the training wheels off. Past time you mortals learned to do for yourselves, rather than letting us do it for you. You’re more than capable. And if you aren’t, or if you act like stupid, short-sighted monkeys and end up either trying to have a love-in with the void, or trying to take its power for yourselves, well, then you’ll all get exactly what you deserve.”
And this was how he justified all that he’d done? “Everybody’s the hero of their own story,” I muttered.
“I never claimed to be nice or good or honorable. Let my siblings cling to those notions. They took exception to my methods, and their solution is to exile me. They would rather endanger all reality than admit I might be right.”
I was on firmer ground here. “No, there’s got to be more to it than that. Maybe the others, but not Jian Huo. He cares for mortals.”
“Take the blinders off, Missy. Jian Huo’s the worst of the lot. Just consider how he has used you.”
I stilled. We’d been speaking in such general, big picture terms that I had stopped expecting Lung Di to get personal. I should have known better. I crossed my arms as though that could protect me from anything he might say. “Jian Huo loves me.”
He shook his head. “You are so naïve.”
“He does.”
“Unquestionably.” He favored me with a pitying smile. “Insofar as a being who predates existence, who transcends the boundaries that separate realities, can love a silly mortal girl with more hair than wit. Do you really believe it? Have you never questioned it? How can a being like Lung Huang love one like you in any way save as a pet – a momentary distraction to a consciousness that spans both infinity and eternity.”
With the inconvenient timing of waiters everywhere, the two servants came and removed our plates. Mine was still untouched. In place, they set down ramekins of crème brûleé with glazed peaches. The sweet, heady scent of the peaches hit me, and the last remnants of my appetite disappeared. My stomach churned, and I had to choke back sudden tears.
“You’re just trying to make me doubt him, to drive a wedge between us,” I said when I could speak again.
He cracked the caramelized top of his dessert. “In my experience, the truth works far better as a wedge than any lie ever could.”
“Maybe you’re right that my life for him is just a brief flash, but that doesn’t mean that he doesn’t love me. He could have ignored me, or sent me on my way. He didn’t. He courted me. He chose me to be his bride. He wouldn’t do that unless he meant it.”
“You were convenient.” Lung Di waved his spoon. I curbed the urge to knock it from his hand. “Your connection to the Shadow Realms made you marginally more useful, but any one of a thousand girls would have done. You made it easy for him. He didn’t have to trouble himself with looking. You came to him. You offered yourself to him. You offered
him something of value, and he repaid you in kind. It was a bargain, like any other, and Lung Huang honors his bargains. You got what you wanted – the approval of dragons – and my brother got what he wanted.”
I hugged myself tighter. “Oh really? And what was so valuable that he would make such a bargain?”
“Children, Missy. You gave him children.” He spoke as if talking to a child himself. “The children you bore him are a more valuable trade than you yet realize.”
“What do you mean?”
“Dragons – true dragons, which is to say we Nine Guardians – cannot breed true offspring. We are creatures of eternity and infinity. There always were nine and there always will be. You might even say that we are not separate beings, but one constant with nine faces, at all times self-aware and aware of our own place in the cosmos, in all iterations of the cosmos.”
He pushed away his half-finished desert and steepled his fingers, settling in to lecture mode. His mannerisms were similar to Jian Huo’s. Uncomfortably so. “Like a mathematical equation, the only way to quantify us is to add a limiter. Infinity must become infinity minus one. We achieve this by dallying with creatures ruled by time and limited by space. The offspring of such unions carry the limitation not only in their blood, but in their metaphysical beings. They’re half-breeds. Mongrels. They are no real threat to the status-quo because they are not true dragons. They become heroes or guardians, and eventually they go the way of all mortal creatures.
“The Nine are not mortal. My siblings exiled me because there was little else they could do. If they had the choice, they would remove me from existence, but doing so would alter our systemic being. It would break our power and create a wound in the cosmos more terrible than even we can imagine. The monsters that only trickle through now would be able to pour through in unstoppable numbers.
“Lung Huang has discovered a way around this. In his hatred of me, he has been most dogged. As I said, there have always been and will always be Nine, but with the birth of your children, it is no longer certain just who the Nine will be.”
“But wait,” I interrupted. “I thought you said they were only half-bloods, not true dragons.”
“Individually, yes, but my brother wrought them well in the crucible of your womb. They are complementary – female and male, yin and yang, twins. They share one soul, and they touch multiple worlds: the mortal world, the spirit world, and the place you call the Shadow Realms. One day, and not too long off by my reckoning, they will have the choice to burn away the limitation of their humanity and incorporate into one being – a being of eternity and infinity. A true dragon. When that day comes, one of the Nine will be supplanted. Jian Huo means for it to be me. I intend for it not to be.”
He leaned forward, a cruel smile playing about his mouth. “That is what you have given him, Missy. That is why I sought to take your children. They are something not even your grandfather could give Jian Huo, though my brother chose exile so that he might try. How could he not have some love for the vessel that has bred the instrument of my destruction?”
I swallowed down nausea. The over-sweet smell of the peaches was making me sick to my stomach. Really, it was the peaches. Lung Di leaned back again, his smile self-satisfied. “Nothing to say? No witty quips? When you are so renowned for your chatterbox charm?”
“I… I want to be alone.”
“Of course.”
I stood and walked away from the table.
* * *
Being alone was the last thing I needed, but it was better than the alternative. For all Lung Di’s civility, I got the feeling that he’d love nothing more than to cause me some serious physical pain. I didn’t want to test the possibility that if I knocked that knowing smirk off his face, he’d indulge that urge.
Instead, I paced my rooms and fumed. I hated feeling so powerless, but that was old hat. This anger was all new, and it was directed at a certain dragon who had been lying to me since I met him.
The crappy thing was, Lung Di’s accusation was plausible. I hated to admit to myself that Jian Huo might use me like that, but I could even understand how he wouldn’t see anything wrong with what he’d done. From his perspective, everything was justifiable. Looking back with this new knowledge tarnished every memory I had of our time together. Even his fascination with my pregnant body took on a more sinister cast. I wanted to rail against it, but in some ways I’d been waiting for the other shoe to drop since the moment Jian Huo welcomed me into his home.
I just didn’t expect it to be a five-inch spike heel through my heart.
I stoked my anger as a means of keeping the pain at bay. I didn’t have time for breaking down. I made another round of the room, sat down to fidget before springing back up and charging into the bedroom. I rooted through the wardrobe, looking for something else to wear, something that didn’t remind me of that dinner. The selection ranged between desperate housewife and vamped-out power attorney, with little choice in between. I settled on black slacks and a cobalt blue silk shell. The silk was so thin that the lace details of my bra stood out in relief, but it was the best the closet had to offer. Muttering imprecations against Lung Di and his sartorial manipulations, I turned back toward the sitting room and promptly tripped over a black, furry form.
“Templeton!” I snarled, harsher than I had any right to be.
“I’m sorry, Missy.” His speech was muffled. He cringed back as though he expected me to kick him. “I didn’t mean to get in the way.”
I took a deep breath, then another. “You’re not in the way, Templeton. It’s my fault for running around like a headless chicken.” I sighed and pushed my heartache back to a deep corner of my psyche. Later. I’d deal with this later, after Mei Shen was free.
“What’s a chicken?” His question took me so off guard that I surprised myself with a choked laugh. I swallowed it before it could become a sob.
“It’s not important. Someday, if we get out of this in one piece, I’ll show you what a chicken is,” I promised.
“All right.” His response was still muffled. His cheeks bulged.
“Templeton, what’s in your mouth?” I asked, not sure I wanted to know. In answer, he spat out his two remaining baubles. They glistened with saliva.
“It is difficult to hold them and walk,” he said, as if carrying them in his cheeks was a reasonable solution to this problem. “And this way I can keep them safe.”
He fondled them a moment longer, then popped them back in his cheeks. “So,” he slurred, “what’s next?”
I shook my head at my strange companion and strode to the door, motioning him to follow. The door opened without resistance. I might be a prisoner, but my warden wasn’t worried about letting me wander. I suppose that should have concerned me more than it did. I smiled down to the rat at my side.
“Stage two,” I answered and slipped into the corridor.
I wandered to get a feel for the place. The corridors wormed about and double-backed upon themselves in a spatially impossible mess. I’d have to find a way to cut through this tangle if I wanted to get Mei Shen out of here. Templeton was right about the shadows, too. They felt strange. Alien. I could tell they led somewhere, but it wasn’t the Shadow Realms I was familiar with. These shadows led to a darker and more frightening place. There’d be no stepping sideways into one with Mei Shen in tow.
They might have unnerved me, but the shadows shied away from Templeton as if they were afraid of him. I’d never seen the rat walk in so much light. The novelty tickled him, and every so often he would lunge toward one just to see it flinch away.
“Templeton,” I snapped when he would have gone chasing one shadow down a side corridor. “Leave the local kids alone. They’re more afraid of you than you are of them.”
“I know. Isn’t it great!” he exclaimed, missing my sarcasm. He did refrain from doing more than snapping at the shadows when they ventured too close.
I returned to the main room. Dinner had been cleared away, and Lung Di
was nowhere to be seen. I fiddled with the controls on the bank of televisions, but all I got was a blue screen of death and one weird game show where the participants had to put live eels into their pants and see who could stand it the longest. Their only reward was additional time on a timer. I switched it off before I could learn what they needed the time for. I had my own live eel to put in my pants.
OK, bad metaphor. Terrible metaphor.
“So, where’s my host?” I muttered under my breath.
Templeton left off sniffling at the shadows to point his nose toward one of the cavernous exits. “That way. In his office.”
I did a doubletake. “How did you know that?”
“They told me.” He nodded at the shadows.
“I thought you said they served Lung Di. Why are they being so helpful?”
Templeton shrugged. “They fear the Conclave more than they fear him. They serve here at the Conclave’s behest.” He snapped at another shadow, which bled into a puddle and scuttled away. I wondered if I’d just witnessed the shadow equivalent of pissing oneself. I tried to focus on how this turn might be useful.
“And they’re afraid of you because you serve the Conclave?” He nodded. “What about me?”
“You’re a lightwalker.” With a flick of his ears, he dismissed me as someone of little importance in the shadow hierarchy.
“Can you ‘convince’ them to take us to Mei Shen? Or lead us out of here?”
He exchanged a few uncanny whispers with the shadows. Dim memories of childhood fears crowded to the fore. The things that had lived under my bed and in my closet made those sounds, I was sure of it. My grandfather always assured me that I was imagining things. Now, I wondered if he was just giving me the only protection he could. Denial is sometimes the only ward against the things that live in the dark.
“They are barred from where your daughter is being kept, but I believe I could make them show us the way out. They are cowards.” He stretched and preened, as if he didn’t spend the majority of his time cowering between my legs. I smiled in spite of myself.
