Dragon’s Claw

by Karen Chance

  But the biggest piece of salvage of them all was coming up fast.

  “Pull up!” The mage said, his eyes wide.

  “Not yet.” They needed the cover that all the flying junk was giving us.

  “What do you mean, not yet!” And the bastard actually tried to grab my reins!

  I slashed out with an elbow, staggering him. “You try that again, and I swear—”

  “Look where you’re going!” he screeched, because the damned man might be powerful, but he needed some serious chill.

  “Get as close as you can,” Ray said, grabbing my shoulder and fumbling around in his coat.

  I didn’t get it until his hand came out clutching his wallet. “Follow the kids,” I told the guys, pointing at two small, curious faces watching us approach through the glass side of a gun turret. “They’ll lead you out!”

  The mage looked confused again, but Zheng apparently knew this place better, and he nodded. “Good one,” he told me, and clapped me on the back in a friendly sort of way that almost knocked me off our ride.

  I righted myself, just in time to see the plane’s bulky tale section coming up fast—or what was left of it. The thing had lost most of the back third through the years, leaving an open backside with some wires trailing out. And a couple of curious kids’ heads popping up, because this was the most excitement they’d had all day.

  “Now!” I yelled, hit the knob with my foot and pulled up on the reins as hard as I could.

  The little chariot strained and smoked, but it buzzed up and over, Ray threw the tykes his wallet, and they took off—

  With a war mage and a master vamp hard on their tails.

  “Aughhh!” Somebody yelled, and this time, it was definitely me. Because the sudden lack of maybe five hundred pounds had caused the tiny craft to go almost perpendicular in the air, threatening to dump both me and Ray out the back.

  And then it got worse.

  A bullet tore past my face and another would have plowed into my torso, except Ray dived in front of me. I stared around, confused and still fighting with the rickshaw. Weren’t the bad guys supposed to be behind us?

  And most of them were. But somebody had been smarter than the average vamp, and waited on the pharmacy roof to see which way we were headed. And now that somebody was diving in behind Ray, snatching him up, and throwing him out—onto a roof, thank God! I had a split second to see him land and flip back to his feet, and then Cheung was in my face.

  Chapter Eighteen

  I hadn’t seen any of the enthralled up close before, but there was no doubt that that’s what he was. The damned man was countering every blow I made and jackhammering me in the face in between, splitting my lip and breaking my nose. But his expression never wavered.

  He might as well have been picking up coffee at Starbucks or reading his email. He wasn’t blank; he wasn’t stoned; he was just getting the job done. And it freaked me out even more than the beating I was taking because I couldn’t fight and drive at the same time!

  I finally gave up, hooked a leg under the bench and let the damned cab flip. A bunch of water that had been sloshing around the floor spilled out, drenching the mass of already soaked vamps below. Who had scrambled all over the creaking airplane, making it creak even more as they used it as a platform to pile on top of each other and to leap, sometimes several stories into the air, trying to grab us.

  And it was us, because Cheung still hadn’t fallen out, damn it!

  “Die already!” I snarled, pulled an emergency weapon from my boot and staked him.

  He blinked, looking startled for a moment, then confused, and then furious when I kicked out with my free leg and sent him flying. I had half a second to see him land in the middle of the mountain of vamps below, which had just reached critical mass. And then the whole lot ended up in the street as the plane finally finished its decades’ long crash.

  That was good, Dorina told me, as I fought with the damned rickshaw.

  “You could have helped!”

  You didn’t need it.

  “Let me be the judge of when I need it!” I yelled, and finally got the cab right side up and pointed in the direction of a nearby building. Where a guy I knew was about to be overrun by another group of vamps leaping from the roof next door.

  Damn it, they were everywhere!

  But Ray was a vamp, too, and he ran like the wind, throwing himself into the void almost before I could get there. Yet he somehow managed to snag the edge of the taxi as I sped by, swinging himself up and into the seat. And then sat there, shaking and looking at me with slightly deranged eyes.

  “Aughhh!” he screamed, which was fair. It was his turn.

  “Aughhh,” I agreed.

  “You okay?” he asked, staring at my nose, which felt a little off center.

  I grinned at him through a bloody lip. “Yeah, you?”

  He nodded, swallowing, and then turned around to peer over the back of the taxi.

  “Was that Cheung?” he asked.

  “Yep, why?”

  “What’s he doing with them?”

  I would have stared at him, but there were vamps leaping at us from every passing roof and bridge. So, I had to content myself with yelling to be heard over the storm while I ducked and dodged and spun and soared. “What do you mean?” I finally asked. “He’s enthralled. That’s his whole family back there!”

  “Where?” Ray looked around.

  “Right there!” I screeched, as a huge vamp with a machete jumped at us from an impossible distance—and made it.

  Or, at least, he would have, except that I’d spun at the last second, leaving him to meet the fan blades head on.

  Or, you know, head off, technically.

  Ray screamed again, maybe because he was now covered in vamp guts. Or maybe because the fan got a little gooped up and stalled out, leaving us sitting ducks until it shed a femur or something and we got underway again. And I noticed that Ray was staring at me some more.

  “What?”

  “A little warning next time! I almost fell out again!”

  “There wasn’t time. You’re just going to have to hold on.”

  “I am holding on!” he bitched. “And that wasn’t one of Cheung’s.”

  “You’re sure?”

  “Of course, I’m sure! I know everybody in his family, and then some. Those guys back at

  the pharmacy weren’t his, either.”

  “Then who was that?” I hiked a thumb back behind us, at what was left of our latest attacker.

  “Like I know? Maybe this creature, whatever it is, enthralled some more vamps?”

  “Some more? How damned many minds can it hold?” I demanded, because magic didn’t work like that.

  In the movies, magic is often treated like some kind of deus ex machina. It’s the solution to every problem that’s always available when you need it. But in reality, while it’s a hell of a power source, it has limits.

  Electricity is a great power source, for example, but it can’t cure cancer; likewise, magic can’t always do what you want. Nuclear power is awesome, unless you don’t know what you’re doing, in which case it can backfire in spectacular ways—and so can magic. And I bet the mage wasn’t going to be summoning more lightning storms anytime soon, because magic can also run out.

  Yet this thing—whatever it was—didn’t seem to have any of the usual constraints. It was holding in thrall not only an army of war mages, but also half the city’s vamps! How was that even possible?

  But it obviously was, because a large knot of vampires had gotten ahead of us and congregated on an upcoming bridge, preparing to jump us as we went underneath. Only they didn’t get the chance. Because the third pillar took that moment to fall, jolting the whole city and sending the smaller, rope bridges swaying wildly. And causing the stationary ones, like the one the vampires were piled on top of, to crack and burst and collapse underneath them.

  Holy crap, I thought, craning my neck to see the carnage behind us as we
sped past.

  “Two,” Ray said suddenly.

  “No, I’m pretty sure that was three,” I said, and in what? The last ten minutes?

  Not good.

  Ray grabbed me. “I was talking about people!”

  “What?” I turned back to look at him.

  “You asked how many people this creature can control. I’m saying, it doesn’t have to be a lot, as long as you got an in. Two or three might do it.”

  I looked at him, still confused, maybe because it was hard to concentrate with the city trembling around us. Because it still was. The rumbling had cut off relatively fast last time, but this just kept going and going, while the rain lashed and the wind blew and the lights glittered—

  Until they abruptly went dark on several buildings, probably because the quake had knocked out their connection to the ley line sink.

  “Dory, we’re talking about vampires here,” Ray said, grabbing my arm. “I don’t know what the deal is with the mages, but you know how it is with vamps: it’s like a hive mind—well sort of. But if you control the master, then you control the entire—”

  “Family.”

  Son of a bitch.

  I looked over my shoulder at the carnage behind us. Damn it! I should have kept hold of Cheung.

  I swung us back around.

  “What are you doing?” Ray yelled.

  “Going back for your old master. If we can figure out how to break the enthrallment, maybe we can get some damned allies around here!”

  “Or get killed!”

  He had a point.

  Because the city was still trembling, and it wasn’t taking it well. I jumped at a sound like a thousand shotguns going off, and looked around. Only to see a nearby building shake and judder and then just split apart, a crack starting at the foundation and running up all ten stories, spilling out people and their belongings into a six-foot-wide gap.

  And it wasn’t the only one.

  Ray and I stared as the city literally started to crumble. A building a block or so away shivered, and every window suddenly burst outward, in an explosion of glittering shards. Others looked like they were molting, shedding bricks and plaster like old skin, some of which fell in entire sheets to the ground. A water main burst, shooting up like a geyser, right underneath us, and almost caused us to founder in midair.

  But when I hit the pedal, we shot out the other side—and into a symphony of disaster. People were screaming, dogs were crowding onto balconies to bark at the sky, sirens were wailing. And still the terrible rumbling went on.

  Until it finally stopped, and for a moment, there was a strange silence, as if the city collectively held its breath.

  And then there was chaos.

  “Fuck me,” Ray breathed, as the remaining buildings erupted with screams and cries and the sounds—everywhere—of cranking engines.

  Suddenly, like a flock of startled birds, hundreds of rickshaws went flying into the air, scattering everywhere. And they just kept coming. This was the first wave, the screw-this crowd, who just wanted OUT. They grabbed whatever vehicles were available and hit the skies, almost causing us to crash about ten times until I managed to maneuver us closer to a somewhat solid-looking building, and out of the main traffic lanes.

  Not that there appeared to be any of those anymore.

  Magical Hong Kong might not be the most law-abiding place on the planet, but there seemed to be some basic rules and—I assumed—people to enforce them. But nobody was enforcing shit right now, and it was everyone for themselves. I wasn’t sure if the populace just hadn’t understood what was happening before, or if they’d assumed it would be dealt with, as the pagoda had been.

  But it was pretty obvious that it wasn’t being dealt with now, and everybody was scrambling.

  The only good thing was that the disintegration of the city and the sudden appearance of thousands of people must have confused the vamps, because I didn’t see our pursuers. Of course, it was hard to see anything past the rain, the rapidly encroaching darkness, and the hundreds of vehicles whipping about everywhere, the lights on their fronts all but blinding as they sped past. All of them going . . . somewhere.

  But there didn’t seem to be a consensus, because they were literally racing in every direction, including the two that had just crashed together and gotten stuck, starting a weird, very profane ballet though the skies as they fought to disentangle themselves.

  “Where is everybody going?” I asked Ray, who shook his head.

  “To the gates! There’s only five and everybody’s trying to get there before there’s a major jam!”

  He said something else as well, but I couldn’t hear him, even standing this close. Because the second wave had started, the screw-this-except-for-my-most-precious-stuff crowd, and there were a lot more of them than the first group. A lot more.

  I maneuvered us as close to the building as I could to avoid the sudden onslaught of vehicles of every description: a portable kitchen under a straw roof, clanking with pots and pans that swayed from the rafters; a massive wooden platform with a fan on each corner and wide-eyed people in open air seats, clutching umbrellas and holding on for dear life; and a frightened looking guy on part of a bamboo scaffold, still holding his tools, and being towed below something I couldn’t see because the roofline cut it off.

  But mostly, there were rickshaws, of all types and sizes. Some were as big as limos, others were even tinier than our own and obviously built for one person yet carrying three or four. But all of them were piled high: with clothes, many of which were flying off into the wind because few people had bothered with suitcases; with crying children gripping favorite toys or with a stranglehold on the family cat; with jewelry boxes clutched in white knuckled hands; with freaked out birds clawing at cages; and with all the crazy things you grab in a crisis because you’re panicking and can’t think straight—floor lamps, paintings, family photos, rolled up rugs, and, in one case, a huge easy chair with the stuffing coming out.

  It was insane, and even more so when Ray told me what they were up against.

  “Back in the bad old days, the overlords closed most of the exits in case of a siege—like on a castle, you know? You only want so many doors to have to guard. And, somehow, they just never got around to opening them back up again. People have been complaining for years about the long lines at the stations, but nobody ever does anything about ‘em, and now—”

  He kept talking, but the wind made his voice fade in and out, depending on which way the gusts were blowing—or the fans were buzzing, or the thunder was rolling. It made it hard to focus, not least because my eyes had fixed on the beginning of a third wave, the kind who thought that panicking was bad and that staying calm in a crisis was always the way to go. When sometimes, panic is your body’s way of getting you to drop everything and run because you’re about to die!

  But some people hadn’t gotten the memo, like the man and his wife and their baby, slowly and methodically packing things into a bus-sized rickshaw. Unlike a lot of people who were just throwing things out of windows and off balconies, they were loading up in what looked like the approved place: a rooftop parking lot. Unfortunately, that was also where anybody without a ride had come looking for one.

  I saw the mother get knocked to the ground and huddle around her baby, fear and desperation on her face, while the man faced off with three attackers, one of whom had a club.

  This wasn’t going to take long, I thought, because I could tell from the husband’s stance that he had no idea what he was doing—

  And, yeah. Thought so. I started forward when the husband got knocked out cold, but Ray grabbed my arm. “It won’t matter!” he told me. “Didn’t you hear what I said? They’re not getting out of here—any of them!”

  “What?”

  I turned to look at him as the thieves threw out the couple’s belongings and sped off.

  “Dory,” Ray said, his eyes completely sober. “I need you to listen to what I’m saying, all right? We did
our job—we figured out what the deal is with those bullets—”

  “Ray—”

  “—we even helped that crazy ass mage get loose, so he can do whatever he’s gonna do. But that’s it. We’re done, okay? Because—”

  “Ray! We can’t—”

  “Like hell we can’t! This place is coming down around our ears and the fucking exits are gonna be clogged with so many people, you’ll never get anywhere near ‘em! Neither of us will! But I know a guy—”

  “We can’t just run—”

  “—who has this unofficial portal business. He can get us out. It’ll cost us something, but right now, I’m not real worried about that—”

  I tried to cut in again, but this time, he didn’t let me.

  “I’m worried about you, okay? You’re not dying here, not today, not for nothing!” He grabbed my shoulders. “Not if I have to finish what that bastard Cheung started and beat you senseless and carry you out of here myself!”

  I just stared at him. His black hair was plastered to his head and water was streaming down his face. But his usually shifty blue eyes were steady and determined, and the fingers biting into my arms were powerful enough to remind me that, appearances aside, I was dealing with a master vamp here. One who’d meant every word he’d just said.

  “Ray,” I said, choosing my words carefully. “I can’t just let a city of millions of people die if there’s a chance to stop it—”

  “That’s what I’m trying to tell you—there is no chance, not for us! We’re just two people, with no weapons, an old jalopy on its last leg, and half the goddamned city looking for us!”

  “I doubt they’re looking too hard right now,” I began. But stopped at the look on Ray’s face.

  “There’s nothing we can do, all right?” he shook me. “Except stay here and die with everybody else! You wanna die for nothing?”

  And no, I didn’t. I’d never understood the appeal of martyrs, or why society lauded them so damned much. Dying for a cause I could understand, although I’d vastly prefer to live for one. But dying for nothing was stupid.