“Will you tell this one’s father she is sorry? This one was tired. After so many thousands of years, this one simply desired to cease.”
“I—” I purse my mouth, but incline my head. There’s nothing more to be said here. At this point, any criticism about her life’s decisions feels unfortunately moot. Lacking the right words, I delay my answer by looking over towards the God of Missing People, who is locking fingers with a spectral hand it had just unearthed. “Yes. But, don’t you think it would be better to tell him yourself?”
“No,” Xiao Quan replies, fading into intangibility. “Not at all.”
I almost let her go. Almost. The exhaustion in her gaze digs like a hook. I know that look far too well. But even as Xiao Quan diffuses, fading into the pale curve of a smile, I chatter another incantation, an ugly barrage of consonants. Her outline snaps back into hard focus.
“What?”
“I’m sorry.” I fold into a half-hearted shrug, feeling somewhat like an adult challenging a toddler to a test of arms. “I sympathize. I do. But you’re going to tell your father about what happened so he’ll call this whole thing off. And please,please can we avoid mentioning the bit with the ghouls? I don’t want to be a bastard, but if you tell, I will make sure it goes just as badly for you as it will go for me.”
THE ENCOUNTER IS less dramatic than I expected it to be, less a meeting between two reptilian divinities, more a pow-wow between father and daughter. Ao Qin wears his human shape throughout the muted conversation as they stand with their foreheads pressed together, the Dragon King’s forearms rested on his daughter’s shoulders, Xiao Quan’s fingers loose about his wrists.
My daughter my daughter my daughter his memories have lightened to hazy watercolour figments in my head, barely distinguishable from a dream. But I feel the afterimage of his agony, his guilt still twinges like an old injury.
Hours later, or maybe minutes, the two separate. Xiao Quan bows low as, shooting a hurt look in my direction, she finally dissolves into air, leaving Ao Qin to goggle at the space she occupied. Three long breaths later, he marches up to me, carrying the smell of salt and death.
“Thank you.”
I nod.
He pauses. You can almost see the words hanging suspended in the air: the apologies, the reassurances, the vocabulary of comfort. But I’m just a man, and he’s a god with a questionable grasp of the value of a human life. Such limitations prohibit wanton brotherly love. “We need to know: was anyone else involved?”
“No.”
His lamplight stare burns molten. “Are you certain?”
“We are. I mean, I am. One hundred percent.”
Ao Qin’s expression remains placid, although his skin does not. Patterns writhe with unverbalized emotion. I glance away just as it reaches his eyes. The God of Missing People is wisely keeping its distance, more preoccupied with the ghost it found in the sand than my predicament. Typical.
“Your daughter had her reasons. Bad ones, definitely, but this is something she wanted. No foul. You have your evidence. You have a confession. I have a confession. Bring it to... to god court, or whatever you call it. I did my job. Now”—the words catch as I hold out the tape recorder for his inspection—“let Minah go.”
The Dragon King says nothing, only regards the device in my palm with what appears to be mild befuddlement. I’m briefly wracked by concern. What if he—
“Thank you.” The gratitude comes stiff, unpracticed. He takes the machine, pockets it, then snags my hand in a rough handshake. “We will have a word with the Furies and their masters. This is more than sufficient for what we require.”
Not trusting myself to speak, I respond with an equally graceless nod. It’s not every day that you catalyze a war for a woman’s sake.
Ao Qin glides sidelong, taking a step back towards the ocean. “Are you certain there’s nothing else you wish to tell us? No further details?”
Karma feels like the weight of the world compressed into a single pin, its point impaled upon the middle of my forehead. I suck in a breath. The universe is watching. This is one of those moments that you clearly recognize as instrumental in the charting of history. One of those decisions that divide reality into parallel dimensions, that defines centuries to come. I clutch that breath like a lifeline. The right thing to do would be to prevent the risk of global conflict.
“No.”
You know what they say. Love makes fools and warmongers out of all of us.
“HOW DID IT go, Rupert?” the boss queries, effervescently delighted.
“Wonderful. I started a war for you.”
He laughs. “Excellent, excellent. Excellent.”
I meander up the hill side, back onto the road. Several metres away, a black sedan sits purring, its driver nonchalantly reclining against its frame. “You sent a ride?”
“Of course. And a change of clothing. We’re told you absolutely reek.” He laughs quietly. “Make sure to change before you come in today. We already have to deduct your pay for your absences. We’d rather not have to cut it any further because of your inability to maintain personal hygiene.”
I don’t ask how he knows, or even why he cares. The boss isn’t exactly someone who should complain about offal, given his predilections. I nod towards the driver, yet another Aryan bombshell. “Sure, boss.”
“We have lamia in stock today, by the way. I hope you’re prepared for the challenge.”
“Sure, boss.” Just another day in paradise for Rupert Wong, cannibal chef.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Cassandra Khaw writes a lot. Sometimes, she writes press releases and excited emails for Singaporean micropublisher Ysbryd Games. Sometimes, she writes for technology and video games outlets like Eurogamer, Ars Technica, The Verge, and Engadget. Mostly, though, she writes about the intersection between nightmares and truth, drawing inspiration from Southeast Asian mythology and stories from people she has met. She occasionally spends time in a Muay Thai gym punching people and pads.
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www.abaddonbooks.com
For a man who started a celestial war, Rupert Wong, Seneschal of Kuala Lumpur and indentured cannibal chef, isn’t doing too badly for himself. Sure, his flesh-eating bosses inexplicably have him on loan to the Greek pantheon, the very gods he thrust into interethnic conflict. Sure, the Chinese Hells have him under investigation for possible involvement in the fracas. And sure as hell, he’s already elbow-deep in debt with the Sisyphean gambling ring. But Rupert is alive.
For now.
Really, it could be slightly worse.
‘She’s too good a writer to ignore.’
Chuck Wendig
“Rupert Wong, Cannibal Chef is one of those books that you have to pick up when you find it, if only just to see whether or not the title is screwing with you. Bottom line: if you can handle the profanity and grotesque content, you just may find this one to your liking...”
Manhattan Book Review
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Five years ago, it all went wrong for Cason Cole. He lost his wife and son, lost everything, and was bound into service to a man who chews up human lives and spits them out, a predator who holds nothing dear and respects no law. Now, as the man he both loves and hates lies dying at his feet, the sounds of the explosion still ringing in his ears, Cason is finally free.
The gods and goddesses are real. A many-headed pantheon—a tangle of divine hierarchies—once kept the world at arm’s length, warring with one another for mankind’s belief and devotion. It was a grim and bloody balance, but a balance just the same. When one god triumphed, driving all other gods out of Heaven, it was back to the bad old days: cults a
nd sycophants, and the terrible retribution the gods visit on those who spite them.
None of which is going to stop Cason from getting back what’s his...
‘If you’re looking for a sassy, hard-boiled thriller with a paranormal slant, Wendig has established himself as the go-to man.’
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‘Exactly the kind of spin I was looking for. Bad asses, psychotic cannibals, religious fundamentalists, zombies and insane clowns... Wendig has created a zombie-infested world that you will enjoy spending time in.’
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Louie “Fitz” Fitzsimmons is getting out of the drugs business. It was never what you might call a career, anyway; he’s got problems – strange, violent, vivid hallucinations that have plagued him since he was a kid – and what with one thing and another, this is where he’s ended up. So he’s been cooking Hollywood gangster Blake Kaplan’s books, and putting a little aside for a rainy day – fifteen million, give or take – and he figures it’s time to cut and run. Until a vision hits at the worst possible moment, and now he’s in hospital and looking at a stretch in County on a possession charge.
Then a Lithuanian goddess of the hunt murders her way into the hospital, and Fitz ends up on the run from a pissed-off angel, and there’s new gods – gods of business and the internet – hunting him down, and what started as a bad day gets a whole lot worse. Because Fitz is a Chronicler, a prophet – a modern Moses or Hesiod – with the power to make, or break, the gods themselves...
‘A head-shakingly perfect blend of deadpan wit, startling profanity, desperate improvisation and inventive brilliance’
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‘Blackmoore is taking urban fantasy in all new directions and setting fire to its cherished tropes’
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SOMEONE HAS STOLEN COYOTE’S PENIS.
The Native American trickster god and Richard Greene, one of his mortal marks, find themselves unwitting bedfellows as they seek to regain what they have both lost. The trail leads them to England, where they find murdered Anglo-Saxon spirits, a reclusive god of the forge, a London gentleman’s club exclusively for deities and a terrifying conspiracy. If Coyote is going to save the world and get his mojo back, it’s going to take everything in his bag of tricks—and he’s suffering from the ultimate performance anxiety.
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Rupert Wong, Cannibal Chef Page 10
