Dragon’s Claw

by Karen Chance

  “Lou sai—” Zheng called, and then stopped himself, I guess because Cheung wasn’t actually his boss anymore. Until recently, they’d been part of the same vampire crime family, who operated an extensive smuggling ring across three continents. But then the current war started, and the North American Vampire Senate lost a lot of masters, and something that almost never happened happened: a bunch of senate seats came up for grabs.

  Two of which had promptly been claimed by Cheung and his former lieutenant, or whatever they called them in the Chinese mafia, meaning that they were now equals in status.

  I wondered how that was working out.

  “Po Gor,” Zheng tried again, I assume using some kind of nickname, although his former boss probably didn’t hear him since he was having his head beaten against the floor.

  “Lord Cheung!”

  Cheung spat something in Cantonese that didn’t sound friendly. Then flipped over and wiggled out of Marlowe’s hold, before kicking him viciously in the chin. And then jumped back on him, like a pouncing cat.

  Zheng sighed. “He’s busy,” he told me.

  I could see that. What I couldn’t see was why Cheung would jump to the conclusion that Marlowe had declared war on him. As far as I knew, they were barely even acquainted.

  So, I asked Zheng. He smoked for a moment, probably debating whether to answer, since he didn’t owe me shit. But I guess he didn’t have anything better to do, either.

  “My old master thinks we aren’t welcome on your senate,” he finally said. “He thinks your consul is angry that we beat out her preferred candidates—shame they couldn’t fight.” He shot me a quick grin. “He thinks this attack is part of a campaign to weaken the family, until an argument can be made to dismiss us from the senate altogether.”

  “And what do you think?”

  He shrugged.

  Zheng was apparently withholding judgment.

  “I’m on the senate,” I pointed out. “And I don’t even have a family. Well, unless you count Ray.”

  Zheng inhaled abruptly, and then coughed/laughed out his opinion of Ray, his former associate, who through a series of weird events had ended up calling me master.

  It was how I knew the term lou sai—Ray had started using it because I didn’t like the alternative, which was a lie. A dhampir can’t be a master because we can’t make vampire children, or any other kind. But Ray didn’t have anybody else, and he and his rag tag family of pathetic vampires had latched onto me.

  Because, in a world where a dhampir can snag a senate seat, anything is possible.

  Only Zheng didn’t seem to think so.

  “You don’t need a family,” he said, before jerking out of the way as Marlowe slammed by, chasing Cheung toward the far wall. “You have your father’s.”

  “Who answer to him, not me.”

  “And who do you answer to?” Another glance, almost coy this time.

  “Myself!”

  He grinned. And then ruffled my hair, because Zheng persists in thinking I’m cute. I guess next to his one-man campaign to prove that the Chinese could build mountain-sized humans, too, I probably looked it.

  “Keep on thinking that.”

  “I will.” I caught his wrist, before he could mess with my hair again. “And now you need to think of something.”

  “Like what?”

  “Like how to stop them before they kill each other!” I gestured across the room, where a wall had just partially collapsed, probably because Marlowe had been thrown through it. I guess it was load bearing, because the ceiling on that end was now sagging, too, and a cloud of dust was billowing into the room.

  So much for the crime scene.

  “I’m not going to kill him!” Cheung yelled, turning on me before Zheng could answer. “I’m going to make him pay!”

  “He didn’t kill your men!”

  “Then who did?” Cheung started stalking toward me, I guess because Marlowe was currently buried under half a ton of brick.

  And, suddenly, things got a lot more atmospheric. Maybe because, unlike the chief spy, I didn’t have any backup in the room. Quite the contrary; other than for the mage, every guy here had a reason to want a dhampir dead.

  Worse, I couldn’t even move when Cheung came at me, not unless I wanted to risk losing my best damned clue.

  So, I stood my ground, not even going into a defensive crouch, because what was the point? And ended up nose to nose with the furious master vamp, who outclassed me in height, but was bending down to try and intimidate me. Yeah, right.

  Like Mircea hadn’t trained that out of me years ago.

  “You. You’re no better than he is!” An angry arm slashed through the dust cloud. “You think I don’t know that you’re here for that father of yours?”

  “Whatever your beef with Mircea is, that’s between the two of you,” I told him flatly. “I have no problem with you—unless you give me one.”

  Cheung stared at me for a moment, and then threw his head back and laughed. Weirdly, it sounded authentic. And thanks to his natural charm, it looked it, too.

  Unlike Zheng, who was smarter than your typical bruiser, but shared a lot of the pound-it-until-it-stops-moving mindset of the breed, Cheung was a suave son of a bitch. In fact, most of the time, he reminded me of a cut rate Mircea. The veneer of bonhomie was thinner, and showed the cracks easier, but the couture clothes, the handsome face and the easy smiles were the same.

  If it hadn’t been for the tiger tat prowling around his body, the nose of which had just stuck curiously out of his collar, I’d have taken him for a wealthy businessman. And even the tat, the symbol of his triad, was beautifully done. Its whiskers twitched at me, and its dark emerald eyes gleamed like jewels.

  Its fuzzy face looked vaguely surprised, though, as if it hadn’t seen the boss lose it like this before, either. Or maybe there was another reason for that expression, I thought in alarm. Because Cheung didn’t bother to come at me again.

  No, this time, he sent his little pet.

  The tiger that, a second ago, had been blinking around sleepily was suddenly off his body and leaping through the air, and growing massively as it came—

  Straight at me.

  I screamed, which is what you do when a thousand-pound tiger jumps for your face; the tiger roared back, loud as a jet engine taking off; and a paw the size of my head popped out a wicked-looking set of claws the size of kitchen knives—

  And knocked the huge creature sideways.

  It took me a second to figure out what the hell had just happened, because I’d also been sent staggering. Or, to be more precise, sent flipping ass over end, courtesy of something erupting from underneath my feet. I hit back down on my butt about the time my eyes managed to focus on . . . a second tiger.

  It was the size of a small car and roared again, loud enough to bring down more of the ceiling, as it leapt for its counterpart.

  A second later, a huge ball of orange and white fury tore across the room, sending vamps scrambling and Marlowe, poking a rubble covered head out of the wall, before abruptly jerking it back in again. I stayed put, stunned and holding my ruined boot. Which was now a bunch of leather scraps, probably because it wasn’t designed to take hundreds of pounds of fur covered ferocity suddenly swelling out of the little crack in the sole the beast had made earlier.

  When it latched onto a new master, I realized.

  Well, shit.

  I buy a lot of magic—because dhampirs don’t make any, and I frequently fight things that do—but not that kind. I’d never seen the point in getting a magical tat to increase speed when, thanks to dear old dad, I can already outrun a freight train. And see better than a hawk. And arm wrestle a bodybuilder until he yelps for mercy.

  Dhampirs have plenty of vulnerabilities, but they aren’t the kind that tats are designed to help with.

  Which left me a little flatfooted at the moment.

  Literally, I thought, staring at my destroyed boot.

  And then Zheng drag
ged me up again. “You want to explain that?” he gestured at the world’s biggest cat fight.

  “Not really.”

  “Dory!”

  “Cheung attacked me. And I didn’t tell it to do that—”

  “And what were you doing with a jianghu tat in the first place?”

  “A what?”

  “A clan exclusive! You aren’t allowed to have one if you aren’t family!”

  “Well, tell it that.”

  Only it looked like somebody else was already trying. Annnnd that may not have been the best move, I thought, as Cheung lost a large piece of his arm. He started spewing red like an extra in a Tarantino film, and that finally seemed to galvanize the family. They’d appeared content to let the boss and Marlowe duke it out, but losing a bicep upped the stakes.

  “Call it back!” Zheng yelled, to be heard over the hissing, snarling and high-pitched caterwauling echoing around the room. His men waded into the fray, and actually managed to keep the tiger from eating any more of the boss. So, it turned its full attention on his furry protector instead, who was snarling and snapping, but also looking less enthusiastic about battle all of a sudden.

  Kind of like me, when Zheng started shaking me. “Dory!”

  “I don’t know how to call it back!”

  “The same way you transferred its loyalty to you!”

  I stared at him. “By stepping on it?”

  The shaking commenced again. “By mastering it! It respects strength—they all do. Now call it back!”

  “Stop doing that!” I snapped and broke his hold. “What do you expect me to say: here kitty, kitty?”

  And the next thing I knew, a huge, furry face was in mine.

  It had really bad breath for a fake tiger, was my only thought.

  And really yellow teeth.

  And a really big tongue, that was now—eww—giving me a face bath.

  The barbs on the tongue scratched my cheeks and caught in my hair, ripping out a chunk of it, while what had to be a bucket’s worth of slobber cascaded down my collar and dripped off my chin.

  And then it did it again, on the other side.

  I sighed.

  Chapter Four

  A few minutes later, Cheung had mostly healed—four centuries of power don’t play around—although his six-thousand-dollar suit was pretty much a loss. He was leaning against the filthy wall off to my left, since it didn’t matter anymore, while Marlowe was propping up the one behind me. The chief spy actually looked better than when he’d started, since the antique outfit—he’d lost the trench somewhere—the earring and the load of grime gave him a disreputable, Jack Sparrow kind of air. I was in between the two of them, sitting on the floor, with a purring mountain of fur draped across my lap, wondering how I got into this.

  And how I was going to get out, or even up, since the damned cat only weighed half a ton.

  Not that my new pet was the real problem here.

  “You think what?” I repeated, because Cheung’s latest accusation made no sense at all.

  An elegantly manicured hand ran through some dust laden hair, and a pair of dark eyes snapped at me. “Your father is a powerful mentalist—probably more so than he admits,” he repeated. “The Empress was never able to suborn him, and she had plenty of time to practice!”

  I assumed he was referring to the diplomatic trip Mircea had made, many years ago, to visit the illustrious Ming-de, empress of the East Asian Court. It was one of the five counterparts to the North American Vampire Senate, which ran herd on more local vamps. The six senates ruled the vampire world, and like any governments, they exchanged ambassadors, only not the modern kind. No, they were more like the ones that had been sent by the old-fashioned courts of Europe: part spy, part supplicant, part seducer—and part whipping boy, there to grovel convincingly for whatever crap their leader had gotten up to this time.

  Only I doubted Mircea had done much groveling, which was kind of the point. The previous ambassadors had ended up Ming-de’s little playthings, wrapped securely around one of her taloned claws. Seriously, she wore those weird fingernail covers that show up in old Chinese paintings, but not to protect her nails, which were probably hard enough to shred marble anyway. But, I’d always assumed, just because she liked having claws.

  She gave off that kind of vibe, frankly.

  Except, that is, to the reps our senate had sent, because she was also a pro at mental manipulation. Our consul finally got tired of basically sending Ming-de new servants and decided to up the ante. So, the next time an ambassador showed up to present his credentials, he was tall, dark and handsome—and every bit as good at the mental game as she was.

  From what I hear, her and Mircea’s first audience had been memorable.

  In any case, Ming-de and the other consuls were currently in town for hush-hush war planning, since the six senates had done the unthinkable and joined forces to combat a bigger threat. At least, I guessed it was hush-hush, since no one had bothered to invite me. That might have had something to do with the fact that my butt was only occupying one of the coveted senate seats because daddy needed the extra vote, so that he, Marlowe and the consul could retain control over a senate now sadly populated with criminals.

  You know, new criminals, as opposed to the ones they’d always had. The senate didn’t care overly much how its members earned their money, as long as they stayed within certain, very loose parameters. But they did care very much that they knew which side they were on.

  I strongly suspected that Cheung was on his own side, but then, weren’t they all?

  “Mircea isn’t mentally attacking you,” I told him now.

  “No, it appears he has upgraded to the physical!” He gestured around furiously.

  In retrospect, having this convo in a dank basement surrounded by the bodies of his men probably wasn’t the best idea. But damned if I was going to take a pirate, a fake tiger and a gnawed-on vampire mob boss home for dinner, so he was just going to have to suck it up. Like I was doing, I thought, as my foot went to sleep.

  I sighed some more.

  “You deny it, then?” he snapped.

  “Of course, I fucking deny it!” He blinked at my tone, because I guess high ranking mafia bosses don’t get talked to like that, but I’d had enough. “Here’s a little clue. If Mircea ever does decide to move against you, you won’t have to worry about suspense. You’ll be dead—the real kind—before you ever notice a thing.”

  “And that is supposed to reassure me?”

  “Yes, frankly. Because, whoever you’re facing, it isn’t him.” Cheung’s eyes slid across to where a filthy Marlowe was giving us both the evil eye. “Oh for—it isn’t him, either!”

  “He was here.” Cheung stubbornly crossed his arms, giving me a glimpse of puckered flesh from the still sunken in bite mark.

  Guess replacing flesh took a little longer than repairing a mere bullet wound—

  I blinked, as something shiny caught my eye. It didn’t catch anyone else’s, perhaps because they didn’t have my vantage point. Or because the two senators were at it again.

  “I was here on behalf of the senate!” Marlowe said. “And if these are your men, why weren’t you here? A master knows when even one of his people dies; you lost over a dozen. It must have felt like—” he broke off, looking uncharacteristically disturbed suddenly. Maybe because he’d lost some of his own men lately, and knew exactly what it felt like.

  “Oh, yes,” Cheung snarled. “I knew. How could I not when it felt like my heart was being ripped out of my chest, and I was being savaged from the inside out? I heard their screams, felt their panic, knew their fear—and the scorching sting of the metal as it tore through their bodies as if it were my own! All while I sat in a private jet, miles above the city, unable to do a damned thing to help them!”

  “I am sorry for your loss,” Marlowe said, and he actually sounded sincere.

  But Cheung wasn’t interested. “Spare me your platitudes,” he sneered. “I know exac
tly how much you mean them!”

  Marlowe stiffened slightly but ignored the insult.

  I guess he was making allowances.

  “I was still abed when word came that gunfire had drawn the police to a basement filled with bodies—very unusual ones,” Marlowe told him. “Fortunately, this place isn’t far from Central—that’s the senate’s main base here in New York—”

  “I know what it is!”

  “—and my men had the humans handled before I arrived. What they did not have was a satisfactory answer for what happened here.”

  “And what I do not have,” Cheung said fiercely. “Is an answer to what has been happening to my family for the last month! Ever since I attained a seat on your blasted senate!”

  “These aren’t the first corpses we’ve found,” Zheng added, only to have his old boss turn on him.

  What followed was a furious conversation in Cantonese, which my ability to order dim sum utterly failed to translate. But Zheng remained unperturbed. I guess he was used to it.

  “If they are behind it, we won’t be telling them anything they don’t already know,” he pointed out after a moment, flipping back to English. “And if they’re not . . .”

  He let it trail off, but I guess the point was made. Because Cheung’s frown edged up a few more notches, into scowl territory. But he didn’t say anything when Zheng turned back to me.

  “In the last month, we’ve lost one of our most important warehouses in Fukien, which went up in a huge fireball; a storefront in Tsim Shat Sui that exploded along with everyone in it; and a ship that dropped cargo and crew in the middle of shark infested waters. And now this! Whatever the fuck this is.”

  Zheng looked around at the scattered corpses, and for the first time, his perpetual sangfroid cracked. Because these were men he knew, men he’d lived with, trained with, and fought beside for who knew how many years. These were men he probably cared about, because the vamp tendency toward self-aggrandizement didn’t mean that they couldn’t feel.

  And judging by the expressions on the surrounding vamps, they were feeling a lot.

  I thought Marlowe better come up with something better than commiseration, or this could get real ugly, real fast.