City of Fire (City Trilogy (Mass Market))

by Yep, Laurence

  Waikiki Beach spread out before them in a broad, gleaming crescent of sand. The ocean rolled onto it in bright sapphire waves. And on the crest of the waves men and women were riding on long, wooden boards.

  “That looks like fun,” Leech said.

  “If you like being a shark buffet,” Koko said.

  “How do they do that?” Scirye said, amazed.

  “You have to ride with the waves, and that takes courage as well as balance,” Bayang said as she tried to select a place for their ambush. “If you try to fight the waves, you drown.”

  Several miles in the distance, the Royal Sheraton Hotel rose like a pink palace among the little houses and palm trees, but just six blocks away was the marina where yachts bobbed majestically. There was one large white one big enough to be an ocean liner. In the boulevard next to them, cars, taxis, and buses flowed in both directions while dolphins on wheeled carts playfully darted about the slower-moving vehicles.

  While Bayang continued her search, Scirye began one of her own for a pay telephone. If she could find one, perhaps she could borrow enough money to call the consulate. She pivoted slowly, her eyes passing over several peddlers in Hawaiian shirts and shorts on the sidewalk, pestering the passengers as they left the terminal and boarded taxis.

  The most persistent was a little elderly lady in a tentlike muumuu that hung loose on her bony frame. The print was of bright red and yellow huge tropical flowers. On her head was a straw hat that looked like an upside-down bowl. Scarlet and saffron feathers adorned the rim and around her neck was a necklace of puka shells and some large pendant, though Scirye could not make out the design.

  Like an elderly canary, she hopped about, thrusting a piece of cardboard first at one tourist and then another. Attached to the cardboard were crude earrings. “You buy, eh?” she chanted, her voice rising and falling musically. “I so, so hungry.”

  “Those are nothing but fishhooks and feathers,” a female tourist said, and made shooing motions with her hands. “Go off and catch a fish.”

  Other tourists made a point of sidestepping around the desperate woman. She turned and held out her trinkets toward Scirye and her companions. “You buy, you buy. Your Auntie, she so, so hungry.”

  Scirye remembered that she had no money—she couldn’t have called home anyway. However, she did have one thing. And that would be Tumarg, too. Pivoting, she jerked her head at Koko. “Give me the candy bar.”

  “What candy bar, girlie?” Koko asked innocently.

  “There were six candy bars and I saw you pocket the extra one,” Scirye said, holding out her hand commandingly.

  Leech nudged his friend. “Give it to her.”

  “But—,” Koko protested.

  “Just do it,” Leech said, “or we’ll be arguing all day with the junior Amazon.”

  Grumbling, Koko dug out the candy bar, partly melted from being in his pocket. “A guy’s got to stay in practice or he loses his touch.”

  “Once a thief, always a thief,” Kles declared.

  “I was going to share it with everybody,” Koko insisted, though from the expression on Leech’s face, not even his best friend believed him.

  Scirye strode over to the old peddler. The girl gave a little bow and presented the candy bar in both hands as if she were an ambassador presenting tribute to an empress. “Here, madam. It’s a small enough token, but I hope you’ll take it in friendship.”

  The old lady took it timidly. “T’ank you.”

  While they were distracted, a voice growled behind them, “Don’t move.”

  Scirye turned her head with a frown.

  A huge white shark with stubby legs and short but muscular arms glared at her. His hide glistened like moist sandpaper and his gills made slushing sounds. “You come with us now,” he said. “We’re going to show you some of the sights.”

  Behind him were a half dozen smaller gray sharks. One of them snickered, “The last ones you’ll ever see.”

  Scirye

  “Into the alley.” The white shark jerked his huge head toward a narrow lane between a T-shirt store and a bar. “Why should we make killing convenient for you?” Scirye demanded. Before she even had a chance to think, her body responded as Nishke had trained her to do—spreading her legs slightly and shifting her weight so she was balanced on the balls of her feet.

  “Fine. We don’t care if these other folks get hurt, too.” The white shark nodded to the tourists crowding the pavement.

  And that would not be Tumarg. Reluctantly, Scirye faced the alley.

  Bayang was by her side. “When I give the word,” the woman whispered softly to the children, “break into a run and then form a semicircle behind me. If I have to transform, it’s better if no one else but them sees me.”

  Scirye took heart. Bayang was a dragon, after all. If she was with them, then things were bound to turn out all right.

  So, though she hated to turn her back on the sharks, she did as she was told and walked with the others. Behind them, the sharks’ tails rasped against the pavement as they waddled in the rear.

  Scirye saw that the alley ended in a brick wall; they would be trapped. On the other hand, the narrow alley would allow only a few of the gang to attack at any one time, so their advantage in numbers would be neutralized.

  She tried to remember all the combat tips that Nishke had shown her as she walked along the stained concrete floor, past a row of smelly garbage cans and over a metal grate, into which dirty brown water trickled from a puddle.

  “Now,” Bayang said and they ran, stopping and turning at the brick wall. Scirye flung open the bundle so that the axes clattered onto the ground. At the same time, Kles sprang into the air, ready with the claws of four paws and a deadly beak. Leech dropped the rope coils and then raised an axe.

  The gang didn’t seem the least bit frightened by the threat. Instead, the sharks smiled greedily when they saw the gleam of gold. “A bonus to boot,” the white shark said, exposing what seemed to Scirye like rows and rows of fangs.

  Scirye placed herself on Bayang’s right side just a step behind her, while Leech and Koko took the left.

  “Who sent you?” Bayang called to the gang. “Was it Roland?”

  “You been making a lotta trouble for him,” the white shark said. At a jerk of his hand, two of the gang started forward.

  Scirye took her stance and gripped her axe tightly. Overhead, she heard the flapping of wings as Kles gained some height in order to dive faster. Bayang’s back tensed as if she were getting ready to change. These thugs were about to get a nasty surprise.

  Suddenly the crazy old peddler appeared at the mouth of the alley. “You buy, you buy?” she asked in a high, cracked voice.

  Scirye waved at her anxiously. “For your own sake, go.”

  “Auntie,” the old lady corrected her as she shuffled into the alley. “I your Auntie.”

  “Auntie,” Scirye said quickly. “Please leave.”

  “You good-good girl,” Auntie nodded. The feathers on her strange hat fluttered vigorously.

  “Yeah, and see what that’s going to get her,” Koko grumbled.

  From a sleeve Auntie took the candy bar Scirye had given her. Flourishing it over her head like a sword, the old woman shuffled forward in her rubber flip-flops, the sandals hitting her heels with each step.

  Suss. Slap. Suss. Slap.

  The sound reminded Scirye of a giant serpent sliding on its belly. The stunned sharks parted on either side until she was between them and Scirye and her companions.

  “Get lost,” the white shark said, shoving the little old lady hard. He seemed surprised when she did not fall to the concrete, but remained standing. He pushed even harder, but he might just as well have been pushing against a marble column.

  Auntie squinted up at him from under the rim of her hat. “But you”—she frowned—”you bad-bad boy.”

  “You don’t know how bad,” the white shark said, and flipped his wrist so that the blade of a gravity knife fli
cked outward.

  “Hey, bad boy.” Auntie seemed amused. “What you gonna do with that toothpick?”

  “Slice and dice,” the white shark said with a wicked grin. “Slice and dice.”

  “I don’t t’ink so,” Auntie said with a shake of her head that sent the feathers fluttering. “Bad t’ings, dey happen to bad boys.”

  Calmly Auntie unwrapped the candy bar. The heat had already made the chocolate mushy so it was easy for her to use the bar like a brush to daub the walls and alley. The white shark watched in astonishment while the gang members murmured nervously to one another.

  Sensing he was losing control of the situation, he tried to grab her wrist. “You’re dead.”

  Auntie smiled. “No, you dead.” And from her mouth came a series of clicks, rising and falling in tone from bass notes to high ones and then back down again.

  For a moment, there was only the sound of traffic in the street, but then Scirye heard a scratching sound like thousands of matches being struck. It wasn’t loud, but it seemed to come from all around her as thousands, perhaps millions, of little legs skittered toward them.

  The gang looked about uncertainly. Strange brown splotches began to appear on the red bricks and then pulse as the stains spread across the walls.

  Scirye gazed in horrified fascination at the nearest one until she realized it wasn’t one spot at all but instead was a group of the largest cockroaches she had ever seen. Some were up to three inches long and they kept crawling from the cracks in the mortar between the bricks. More were streaming out of the grate in the alley floor in a steady flood until they were surrounded by the insects. Scirye felt as if she were in the middle of a sea of tentacles with the waves about to crash down upon them.

  Auntie folded her arms. “Shame on you, pick on a weak old lady.”

  Several of the gang were burbling in fear, and the white shark’s gill slits flapped open and shut as he stared at the bugs surrounding him. But he tried to tough it out. “I’m not scared.”

  “Then you should be,” Auntie said and snapped her fingers.

  From here and there in the alley came a rattling noise like beans in a bowl, and the sound swelled in volume until it filled Scirye’s ears. The cockroaches were flapping their wings together.

  At another snap of Auntie’s fingers, they launched themselves into the air. It was as if the floor and the walls were all collapsing.

  A gray shark opened his mouth to scream and a stream of them entered his mouth, choking his cry. Another shark slapped his face and the sides of his head as cockroaches sought to enter his huge mouth and nostrils.

  Koko was squatting, holding his hands over his head with his eyes shut. Kles had flown down to Scirye’s shoulder so he could spread his wings protectively over her mouth and nose. However, the insects flew past them. Even so, some of the flight paths strayed enough to hit them in their passage. It was like being grazed by bullets.

  The insects covered each of the gang in a dark, wriggling skin so that not a hair or wart or an inch of hide could be seen. The white shark flailed his arms, taking a few stiff steps until he fell, and the cockroaches swept over him until he was simply a hump beneath the insect mass. His screams were suddenly muffled as insects filled his mouth. One by one, the rest of the gang plopped on the ground and disappeared under a living brown carpet.

  Auntie surveyed her work with a smile that made Scirye shiver despite the heat. Auntie seemed to be enjoying her handiwork.

  Scirye shoved Kles’s wing away. “Please, Auntie. Stop it.”

  Auntie screwed her wrinkled face in puzzlement. “Why? Dey try kill you, you know? Dey bad-bad boys. So Auntie fix dem. Den dey no bad-bad no more.”

  “No one deserves to die like this,” Scirye begged. “Not even them.”

  “You good girl,” Auntie said, and tapped a finger against her temple, “but you lolo, too.” Then, with a shrug, she snapped her fingers again. “But you say please. So ‘kay.”

  The cockroaches swarmed back into the walls or down the grate. Even more rose in a brown cloud upward, toward the rooftops above.

  The sharks lay in the alley, flopping and whimpering, with hundreds of little red marks on their tough hides.

  Auntie walked over to the white shark and nudged him with her toe. “You bad boy gonna behave?”

  The white shark nodded numbly.

  “So you listen to your Auntie, eh? Or next time my pets, dey nibble you to… da… bone.” She clicked her teeth together for emphasis.

  The white shark nodded his head and then, not sure if that was the proper answer, he shook it vigorously, as well.

  “So you go,” the strange woman said, jerking her head toward the street. “You don’t bodder anybody no more.”

  The gang did not even try to get to their feet but scrambled on all fours, casting frightened looks over their shoulders at the old woman.

  The strange old woman pivoted slowly and swept her index finger along to indicate Scirye and her companions. “And now you,” she mused.

  “Put down your axes,” Scirye said to the others, and squatted down to place her axe on the alley floor. The others quickly copied her and Kles settled back on her shoulder.

  Then, bravely, the girl tried to stand up again. As the old woman drew near, Scirye felt the power emanating from the little wizened brown body now, like a thousand-watt bulb. Her comical dress only seemed to add to the menace.

  Of all the deadly beings that Scirye had encountered so far, the girl felt that none had been more dangerous than this old lady in her whimsical costume.

  Kles growled a warning but because it resonated in his beak, it had a slight echo—like a lion’s cub with its head stuck in a hollow tree.

  As the old woman’s eyes narrowed, the girl pressed a hand anxiously against the griffin’s leg to signal him to keep quiet. Kles snapped his beak angrily but fell silent as Auntie leaned forward and took a good whiff of the griffin.

  Scirye, in turn, caught the old woman’s scent of stale tobacco mixed with sweet coconut milk.

  “Birdy pet okay,” Auntie declared.

  “I am not a pet, my good woman,” Kles informed her. “I am a servant in this lady’s retinue. The first among many, I might add.”

  “Dat so? Chick-chick tell da fortunes, too?” Auntie asked, amused. When she smiled, the many folds around her eyes crinkled up like paper. “Or you just hoping, eh? Still, I like chick-chick.”

  It was an impressive sight to see a griffin in full indignation because both his fur and feather bristled. Even more anxious, Scirye squeezed her friend’s leg. “Just be grateful, Kles. We saw what happens when she doesn’t like you.”

  Auntie’s eyes twinkled. “You not just good-good, you smart girl, too.” Standing on tiptoe, the old woman sniffed the girl, moving from one cheek and over to the other.

  Suddenly Scirye felt dizzy, as if she were standing on one foot on top of a narrow mountain peak and at any moment about to lose her balance. Yes, it was all about balance. This strange old woman was weighing her like someone using scales to tell a genuine coin from a counterfeit.

  Trying to keep from shivering in fright, Scirye dropped her eyes and fastened instead on the pendant of Auntie’s shell necklace. It was a rectangle of old ivory with a crude but powerful carving of a bearlike man.

  “Hmm,” the old woman murmured, and then took a particularly loud sniff as if she were a vacuum cleaner and Scirye was a dust bunny. Then Auntie rubbed her nose thoughtfully. “I smell mana, big mana.”

  Scirye wrinkled her forehead as she tried to puzzle out what the strange, frightening woman said. “Excuse me?”

  The old woman sighed in exasperation. “How come you doan hear? I talk good.”

  “I… uh…,” Scirye stammered, even more scared than before.

  “Please excuse our ignorance, Madame,” Kles intervened, “but we’re unfamiliar with your vocabulary and the way you speak.”

  “Okay, chick-chick,” Auntie said. “Den I talk like stupi
d tourist, too. But I find your brand of English flat and boring. Do you understand me now?”

  Kles bowed deeply, ruffling his wings as he did so. “Yes, thank you. We’re sorry for the inconvenience.” He tapped a claw against Scirye’s shoulder to remind her to remember her manners.

  “Yes, thank you, Auntie,” Scirye said hastily, “and please excuse me, but what is mana?”

  “Mana is a force that we all share,” Auntie explained, still in a musical voice that made the syllables rise and fall like a song. “You, me, the ocean, the sky, the rocks, we all have it. But some have more of it than others. When they have as much as you, they do great things.”

  Scirye looked up again, blinking in surprise. “Me? But I don’t feel any different.”

  “You can’t tell, but I can.” Auntie’s eyes bored into her. “Somebody marked you for sure.” And then she turned to the others, her musical voice now becoming as ominous as the distant rumble of thunder. “But the rest of you. Are you goody-goodies, too? Or”— her eyes narrowed dangerously—”are you baddy-baddies?”

  Scirye

  Koko was shaking openly. “We’re… goody-goody. We gave you our c-c-candy.”

  Auntie jerked a thumb at Scirye. “She gave the candy to me. Not you.” She stuck her face almost nose-to-nose with the boy and inhaled sharply. “Hmph, a stinking kupua! What kind of trouble are you trying to cause here?” was her judgment.

  Leech stared puzzled at Koko. “Kupua?”

  “A kupua” Bayang explained, “is a shape-shifting creature.”

  “Hey.” Koko grinned nervously at Auntie. “No hard feelings.”

  Scirye regarded Koko with new interest. If Koko was in disguise like Bayang, what was his true form? Since Leech didn’t show any surprise at the revelation, he must have known his friend’s secret already.

  “I knew there was something funny about his smell,” Kles said.

  “I resent that,” Koko said, slapping his paunch, which boomed like a drum. “I take baths.”