Heroines and Hellions: a Limited Edition Urban Fantasy Collection

by Margo Bond Collins

  Danyael proved adept with chopsticks and comfortable eating family-style off common serving platters set in the middle of the rosewood table. “Xin tells me you lived for a few years in China before migrating to the United States. Do you find China much changed?”

  “In twenty-eight years, everything has changed.” Ching Shih plucked a portion off the fish steamed in ginger and rice wine, and placed it on Xin’s plate before serving herself. “The food is still excellent, though. Too hard to find in America.”

  Xin smiled at Danyael. “Ching Shih is an amazing cook.”

  Ching Shih dropped her gaze, her cheeks flushed. “It is a simple thing. It only takes time to learn.” The tone as well as the look she shot Xin was critical.

  “When did you learn?” Danyael asked.

  Ching Shih gave Danyael a sudden, hard look.

  He met her eyes steadily, his expression curious.

  Ching Shih’s suspicious gaze softened as she reached for the porcelain cup filled with fragrant jasmine tea. “At the laboratory where I was born; only I did not know it was a laboratory. I was raised with much care and deference; I knew I was special. I received training in everything—history, geography, mathematics, science, music, and art.” She smiled faintly. “Cooking I learned in my own time; it was considered too menial a task for me.”

  “Did you have parents?”

  Xin froze at Danyael’s candid question, but her mother responded as casually as if they were talking about the weather. Ching Shih shook her head. “No. I had lots of amah—nannies, caretakers, and tutors. I overheard them talking about their parents, brothers, sisters, and families, so I asked about mine, but no one answered. Their faces stilled and their tongues fell silent.”

  Her heartbeat racing, Xin set down her chopsticks. She had never heard stories of her mother’s life in China, and it had not been for lack of asking. Ching Shih had refused to speak of it, and eventually, Xin had lost interest. Why was her mother speaking now, confiding in Danyael as if she had known him her whole life?

  Always an ulterior motive. Xin knew it was as true of her as it was of Ching Shih, but what could her mother’s motivations be? What was there to gain by sharing the past?

  Ching Shih topped up her rice bowl with bokchoy stir-fried with chopped garlic. “I was thirteen when another girl came to live in the big house in Wuyuan.”

  Wuyuan? Wasn’t that the little village touted as the perfect expression of a rural life under colorful blossoms? Unless there was another place called Wuyuan, her mother had been raised in the heart of China’s most beautiful countryside.

  Ching Shih continued. “The girl was a raw-boned peasant from Guilin, as docile as a sheep and almost as stupid. I did not understand why she was there until her stomach swelled.”

  Xin’s breath caught. “What was her name?”

  “Ai Li. She was twenty-one, or twenty-two, when she gave birth to you. The doctors who came to the house every week to check on her took her away to the hospital. She returned several days later, her womb empty, her arms and heart full.” Ching Shih’s eyes locked on Xin. “Perhaps she was too stupid to understand that you were not really her child—that you were an embryo cultivated from cells extracted from Fu Hao and implanted into her—or it simply did not matter to her. She adored you.”

  “What was she like?” Xin asked.

  Ching Shih shrugged. “Simple. Peasant-stock.” She gestured at the plate of fish. “She would eat the body of the fish.”

  Danyael looked bemused. “If not the body, then what part of the fish should be eaten?”

  “The flesh is most tender at the stomach. In ancient China, the fishmongers would chop the fish into pieces. The stomach was sold to the wealthy; the tail to the middle class, and the main part of the body to the poor.”

  Xin stared at the fish stomach, yet untouched, that her mother had set on her plate. “Can you tell me more about Ai Li?”

  Ching Shih’s gaze flared as her voice chilled. “What else is there to say? She gave birth to you.”

  7

  She gave birth to you.

  Ching Shih’s words, seasoned with bitterness and anger, stayed with Xin through the night and woke her in the morning with the first light of dawn. She sat upright in bed and drew the covers around her shoulders. Her eyes fixed on the glow of the sky outside the window, but her thoughts remained trapped in the conversation around the dining room table.

  Ching Shih might as well have said, “She ruined my life.”

  Danyael—thank God—had stepped into the awkward silence that followed and changed the topic to Henan’s tourist attractions, but her mother’s flat voice and matter-of-fact tone stayed with Xin.

  She—not Ai Li, but Xin—had ruined Ching Shih’s life. Ai Li—a simple peasant girl with uncomplicated emotions and motherly instincts—was incapable of ruining Ching Shih’s life. A cloned infant possessing the genes of Fu Hao, the Shang dynasty queen, general, and high priestess, most certainly could, and obviously did ruin Ching Shih’s life. How could the clone of a mid-19th century woman, however remarkable the woman, hold the spotlight next to the 3,200 BCE clone of a Chinese queen?

  Xin’s birth had obviously shattered the foundations of Ching Shih’s world. It certainly explained a great deal, including the low-grade anger that defined their relationship and Ching Shih’s emotional distance.

  It did not, however, explain everything else—Xin’s favorite dishes served on short notice during her rare visits home; the choice piece of fish Ching Shih had placed on Xin’s plate; even the fact that Ching Shih had accompanied her to China at all.

  None of it makes sense. She’s the one person I don’t understand.

  Asking Ching Shih was out of the question—a direct question posed to a Chinese parent was akin to a challenge—and Xin was not ready for an emotionally wringing confrontation with her mother, not when she had Danyael’s missing blood and a possible rogue laboratory to contend with.

  Stifling a sigh, Xin flung the covers aside and stepped out of bed. What she needed was a cup of tea to settle her mood. She sipped the hot beverage as she wandered through the courtyards. The fog rising from the ground blanketed both grass and concrete in gray damp, and the sky was overcast. She sighed. Not the best day for sightseeing. Danyael, she hoped, would have more success with his day.

  Movement caught her eye, and she glanced up as Ching Shih, in a silk blouse and khaki slacks, walked out of the pagoda. So much for her personal quiet time. Xin quashed the flicker of disappointment and fixed a smile on her face. “Did you sleep well?”

  “Yes, I did.”

  “And dinner with Danyael last night; I hope it wasn’t too stressful for you.”

  “No, it was not. Your friend, Danyael—he is a good man.”

  “He’s a mutant—a psychic, just like Yu Long.”

  Her lips pursed, Ching Shih shook her head. “Not like Yu Long. Danyael gives. He does not take.”

  Xin smiled. She had never heard a more succinct way of describing Danyael for whom compassion was both his greatest strength and his greatest weakness. How had Ching Shih so quickly distilled the truth from her limited interactions with Yu Long and Danyael? Xin glanced down at the porcelain cup in her hands before looking up and meeting Ching Shih’s gaze. “About last night—”

  “I must get breakfast; we are leaving soon to visit Fu Hao’s tomb.”

  Apparently, getting her mother to open up without Danyael’s powerful empathic influence was going to be a problem. Xin stared at her mother’s retreating back. “I’ve already left,” she murmured. “The only question is whether I’ll come back.”

  And if there’s anything to come back to.

  Fu Hao’s tomb, located at Yinxu, the ruins of the ancient Shang dynasty capital, was excavated in 1976 and found intact with the royal corpse and a wealth of bronze and jade artifacts. A memorial had been set up at the site, and it attracted visitors—some foreign, but mostly local.

  Happily inconspicuous in a crowd o
f Chinese people, Xin wandered through the small museum that housed the weapons and statues found in the tomb, and traced her fingertips over the inscription on one of the bronze pottery pieces.

  “Mu Xin.” Yu Long’s voice came unexpectedly from behind her. He nodded down at the inscription. “She was called Mu Xin posthumously, and the name was inscribed on burial pieces. She was one of China’s most notable women.” He glanced over his shoulder at Ching Shih, who stood across the room, looking at another exhibit. “Zheng Yi Sao, too. She commanded thousands of ships and ten thousands of men, and she was the only Chinese pirate to retire wealthy and die of old age.”

  “The latter is more remarkable than the former,” Xin murmured. She tilted her head to study a bronze piece wrought in the shape of an animal. “That is not an owl.”

  “Oh?” Yu Long shifted closer to study it from her angle. “What is it, then?”

  “An unfortunate cross between a donkey and a piglet.”

  He laughed. “Those things there…” He pointed to the carvings on the side of the vessel. “They’re the wings.”

  “When pigs fly…” Xin laughed. “Obviously, there isn’t much separating ancient art and modern symbolism.”

  “No, there isn’t, but as someone who flunked art in eighth grade, I’m probably not qualified to comment on art of any sort.”

  “One does not have to be an expert to be a critic. Otherwise, social media would have died in its infancy.”

  Yu Long chuckled, but a moment later, his expression smoothed into something that Xin recognized as cool, professional distance. “Did you enjoy dinner last night?”

  “You know I did, and I’m sure you know who my guest was.”

  “Why is Danyael Sabre visiting China?”

  “Why don’t you ask him?” Or better yet, read his mind.

  “You know it’s impossible to get answers out of Danyael that he does not want to give. We are watching him, of course, but our operatives have been told to keep their distance and to trust his judgment. We wouldn’t want to offend an alpha empath—not in a country as crowded as China.”

  “Danyael doesn’t hurt innocents. Heck, most of the time, we can’t even get him to hurt those who deserve to be hurt.” And if he does, his guilt and nightmares last for years.

  “I know, but collateral damage doesn’t stop to take names and check alignments before kicking butt.”

  “You’re a gamer, aren’t you?”

  “Old school; table-top D&D.”

  “The best way to play.” Xin smiled faintly. “Are you really a gamer, or did you say that only because you know I am?”

  Yu Long laughed. “You’re as cynical and suspicious as your file says you are. I really am a gamer, but I don’t suppose it matters. At this stage, impressions are more important than the truth.” He fell in beside her as they continued walking past the museum exhibits. “Danyael is in China as the guest of Sir Brandon Richards. I presume he is interested in Excelsior’s work.”

  “Possibly.”

  He glanced sideways at Xin. “You intend to make this difficult, don’t you?”

  “We’re not friends, Yu Long. At this point, we’re not even allies. Even if we were, I’m not obligated to tell you anything. I’m here as a private citizen. I have no orders from my government to cooperate.”

  “And that’s where Beijing screwed up.” He shook his head. “Sometimes I think they’d let thousands of people die before admitting that they might need help from someone else. We would have gotten a lot further a lot faster if our governments just ordered us to play together nicely.” A muscle twitched in his smooth cheek. He drew a deep breath and expelled the words in a rush. “We have…problems in Zhengzhou.”

  “Vampires?”

  “What? Oh, those.” He dismissed it with a wave of his hand. “A few bodies—children, mostly—have turned up in a somewhat bloodless state. It’s nothing. The bigger issue is that our murder rate has skyrocketed in the past six months. The city is doing everything it can to suppress the news and the panic, but we won’t be able to clamp down for much longer.”

  “I’m not a crime investigator, and neither is Danyael.”

  “These people aren’t robbed. Nothing’s taken from their bodies. They’re just killed in vicious, crude ways—their throats torn out, eyes gouged, ears ripped.”

  “Any eyewitnesses?”

  “None. No survivors either.”

  Xin frowned.

  “Yes, that part had us stumped too. Hundreds of murders, no witnesses, no obvious connections to each other, and no apparent motivation. When Beijing contacted Zhengzhou and told them that you wanted to visit, their answer was an automatic no. They were too embarrassed; they couldn’t bear the thought of the revered Fu Hao witnessing the shambles they had made of the empire she had built. I spent hours talking them out of their decision, assuring them that I could convince you to help us. You understand and control data in ways that seem almost magical; you see patterns no one else can. We need your help. I need your help.” The Adam’s apple in his throat shifted as he swallowed hard. “People are dying.”

  “It’s not why I’m in China.”

  “Then tell me, why are you here?”

  Instead of answering him, she walked out of the museum. Her gaze traveled to the marble statue of Fu Hao keeping eternal watch over the tomb. The statue wore armor and a helmet and carried a battle-ax by her side. Ceremonial food and incense offerings cluttered the base of the pedestal. A well-dressed Chinese couple placed joss sticks in the sand-filled incense holder and knelt at the foot of the statue to touch their foreheads to the ground.

  Xin shot Yu Long a quizzical glance.

  He grunted. “After her death, King Wu Ding offered prayers to Fu Hao to grant him victory over his enemies. The tradition continues, although these days, people pray for success in the boardroom instead.”

  “She doesn’t look like me,” Xin said.

  “Artistic license.” Frustration snapped through Yu Long’s voice. “The statue was sculpted long before you were cloned.” His eyes narrowed. “You’re smaller than I expected. Holding a battle-ax might snap your wrist.”

  “Ah, so you’ve finally decided to dispense with the artificial politeness. Just as well. It was overdone. It set you off on the wrong foot with Ching Shih.”

  “And with you?”

  “I try not to take artifice personally.” She paused as she debated her options. She and Yu Long might not have been friends, but neither were they enemies. Yet. “I’m here because Danyael believes something is wrong at Excelsior.”

  “What’s wrong exactly?”

  “He doesn’t know.”

  Yu Long flung his arms in the air. “Those damn empaths and their ‘I’ve got a bad feeling about this.’ It’s a wonder they don’t just call themselves Jedi and be done with it.”

  Xin laughed. “Danyael may be the only alpha empath alive who would let you get away with saying that. The others, as far as I know, are entirely lacking in humor.”

  Yu Long’s expression sobered. “It takes too much pain to sculpt an alpha empath. Those who survive are soured on life, and I don’t blame them.” His gaze drifted away from her to fix on a distant point. “Is Danyael really as remarkable as they say he is?”

  Xin shrugged. “He always finds a way to surprise me.”

  “You? The consummate planner?”

  “You can’t plan for Danyael, or Zara, for that matter. Their moral compasses don’t quite point the way you’d expect them to, considering their backgrounds.” She turned to face him, and their eyes met—hers challenging, his quizzical. “I think we can help each other.”

  “What do you want?”

  “A blind eye from your government when I help Danyael find the information he needs at Excelsior. In exchange, I’ll take a look at the data you have on those murders.”

  “Done.” Yu Long extended his hand to her. “The top floor of the pagoda was set up as a study. You could use that space for your work,
if you don’t mind the stairs.”

  “Will you come by and disable the surveillance equipment in the study before I start work in there?”

  He looked sheepish.

  “I don’t do well with people looking over my shoulder,” Xin added. “Nerves. You understand.”

  “I’ll have to clear it with someone else. I’ll know by morning.”

  She shrugged. “Fine. Oh, and I’d like to know if any other bodies are found.”

  “Are you a forensic scientist too?”

  “No, but I know a doctor I trust to conduct an autopsy.”

  “You’re going to bring Danyael into this?”

  “Isn’t that how life works? Favors are reciprocal.”

  “Is that a good idea? I’m concerned…about an alpha empath running loose in China. The municipal authority of Zhengzhou would sleep a great deal better at night if Danyael just left.”

  “Are you afraid he’ll drop his psychic shields and drive thousands of people to suicide?”

  “Millions, and yes, we are afraid he’ll do to Zhengzhou what he did during that Sakti terrorist attack in Washington, D.C. A catastrophe on that scale would make our skyrocketing murder rate look like a paper cut.”

  “You need to trust Danyael more.”

  “How can I trust someone I don’t know?”

  Was it possible to truly know anyone? Motion flickered at the corner of her eye, and she turned to see Ching Shih walk out of the museum and toward her. Xin had spent much of her life with Ching Shih and not until last night did she realize how little she knew of her mother.

  What else haven’t you told me? And do I want to know?

  “Please excuse me,” she murmured, turning her back on Yu Long to walk up to Ching Shih. She offered her mother a smile. “Do you like the museum?”