Heroines and Hellions: a Limited Edition Urban Fantasy Collection

by Margo Bond Collins

  She swallowed hard. “This is…blackmail.”

  Yu Long shook his head. “I’m stating the facts. You facilitated Ching Shih and Mu Xin’s escape from China.”

  “I did nothing—”

  “If you hadn’t removed the tracking chip, they would not have made it five miles.”

  “Tracking chips are placed in animals, not people.”

  “I never pegged you for a humanitarian.”

  Her chin lifted. “Creatures—especially humans—in gilded cages never attain their full potential. How far would you have gotten on this case without Xin’s help?”

  It did not bear thinking. Danyael’s instincts for trouble and Xin’s amazing ability to wring coherence out of data had made all the difference. Yu Long expelled a shaky breath as he straightened. “It’s not their problem; neither of theirs. It’s ours—and we will address it. I want the chemical, Dr. Shen.”

  She studied his face, her expression indecipherable. After a long moment of silence, she pushed to her feet. “All right; whatever happens, it’s on you.”

  His sigh scarcely more than a release of his breath, Danyael reached over his shoulder to massage the back of his neck. Shafts of pain pulsed through his skull; a migraine had caught hold and refused to let go.

  He knew exactly why.

  If I survive this, Zara’s going to kill me.

  He glanced up at the clock on the far wall of the laboratory—it was closing in on midnight—before gathering the papers on the desk into a neat stack. His mind churned through the mundane. Last will and testament. Check. A good meal and a good night’s sleep. Coming right up. Whatever it took to increase his miniscule odds of success.

  He locked the laboratory door behind him and continued down the corridor. A thin band of light came from beneath the door of Dr. Shen’s office. He paused and knocked at the door.

  “Who is it?” Dr. Shen’s thin voice sounded shriller than ever.

  “It’s Danyael. May I come in?”

  Footsteps sounded behind the door, and moments later, it opened. Dr. Shen peeked out. “Can I help you?”

  “I completed several more blood analyses. We need to talk.”

  She stepped aside to let him into her office.

  Danyael sank into a chair without invitation. His gaze flicked over her pale, pinched face. “You look tired.”

  “We all are.” Her smile was wan and perfunctory. “What is this analysis you completed?”

  “The ten jiangshi who were killed in the fight with the soldiers were finally identified. Two were minor psychics. The other eight, apparently, were not.”

  Dr. Shen’s head raised, and she stared at Danyael, horror seeping into her eyes. “What…are you saying?”

  “I ran an analysis of the shuang kuangxi in their blood and compared it to the original formula from Excelsior.”

  Her lips parted. “It’s different? It mutated?”

  “It’s subtly different, and yes, it mutated. The first jiangshis were minor psychics. Ordinary humans were silent carriers—infected and infectious—but showed no physical symptoms. Not so with this variant. Its increased potency amplifies the sensory awareness of ordinary humans, turning them into jiangshi.”

  She shook her head. “How…how did we not know this?”

  “You didn’t have any jiangshi to run tests on until today.”

  “But we had victims before this.”

  “Yes, but people find what they look for, and the autopsies weren’t conducted with shuang kuangxi in mind.” He sighed, more motion than sound. “The thousands of jiangshi clued me in—”

  “Thousands?” Her jaw dropped. “But Yu Long said there were twenty, no more than thirty.”

  “Probably no more than that number attacked them when they were in the service tunnels, but I saw far more in the caves beneath the tunnels.”

  Dr. Shen shot to her feet. Panic flared in her eyes. “And Yu Long does not know that?”

  Didn’t he? Danyael replayed his conversations with Yu Long. A chill crept through his chest. “It…didn’t come up. I told Xin, but obviously, the message didn’t get to him.”

  “He’s going into the tunnels. He’s taking the police with him to hunt down the jiangshi with the chemical—”

  “Which one?”

  “The one that amplifies the sensory effects and drives the jiangshi to suicide.”

  Danyael’s hands clenched into fists. “Get Yu Long and his men out of the tunnels now.”

  “But they have weapons and their bullets are laced with—”

  “All fights are dangerous, and suicide is messy. There will be collateral damage. Police officers will be killed, or worse, injured.” Danyael shook his head, his jaw tight. The mild headache he had been harboring since his argument with Xin throbbed on the verge of a migraine. “We’ll find ourselves up against jiangshi who are armed and who are trained to fight. Get Yu Long’s men out of the tunnels. Now.”

  Yu Long held up his fist to signal a stop. The team of fifty men following him clattered to a halt, and the echo of a hundred boots on concrete ricocheted against the tunnel walls before fading into silence.

  He gritted his teeth. Chen’s men had better be as capable as Chen had claimed. Unwilling to count on squad commanders he did not know personally, Yu Long had roped in three alpha telepaths to lead the other three teams searching the tunnels. He flung his thought out, grateful that telepathic communication was not hindered by the thick concrete walls. Any sight of the jiangshi?

  Huan, a telepath, responded. Nothing yet. What kinds of numbers are we expecting anyway?

  Yu Long grunted. Twenty, at least, but it was hard to tell in the darkness and the chaos.

  We’ve got them out-numbered, at any rate.

  Yeah. Yu Long scowled. We’ll need the numbers on our side. He glanced down at his assault rifle, its bullets laced with the chemical solution that he had persuaded Dr. Shen to manufacture at Excelsior’s production facilities. We’ll need all the help we can get.

  I think we’ve got something, Lee, another telepath, said. Checking it out.

  A hand tapped on Yu Long’s shoulder. “Sir, there’s movement in the western tunnel.”

  He sent out a probing thought to confirm that it was not one of the other teams. No, they were in distant parts of Zhengzhou, combing through their assigned sections. He nodded to the man. “Go check it out.”

  They’re everywhere! Lee’s voice screamed into Yu Long’s mind.

  Lee? Yu Long stiffened. How many? He waited for several moments. Huan? Tang?

  Still here.

  Me too.

  Lee? Yu Long glanced over his shoulder at the communications officer. “Get in touch with Lee’s squad now.”

  “Yes, sir.” The officer reached for his communication devices. Several moments passed, his expression growing grimmer by the second. “Sir, there’s no answer,” he said finally.

  Tang’s voice burst through Yu Long’s mind. What the—no!

  They’re here! Huan shouted. Too many!

  A faint sound whispered through the tunnels, like the tap of bare feet against cold stone. Police officers swiveled, trying to pinpoint the echoing sound. Assault rifles braced against shoulders; fingers hovered over triggers.

  Tang? Huan?

  Neither responded.

  A yelp of surprise spiked into a scream of terror.

  Yu Long pushed past his men and raced down one of the branching tunnels. The flashlight attachment on his assault rifle blazed light on a jiangshi crouched over a flailing soldier. The once-human creature looked up, its eyes blinking against the glare, as if in pain. Its upper lip lifted, baring its teeth, and it lunged.

  Yu Long fired. The bullet pierced the jiangshi’s shoulder and emerged on the other side in a spray of blood. Its momentum unchecked, the creature stumbled forward onto Yu Long, driving both of them to the ground. Yu Long swung the butt of his rifle into the creature’s dirt-streaked face, but only succeeded in knocking it back several steps. It
was on him again before he had time to catch his breath. He dropped his rifle and caught the jiangshi’s wrists before the creature swiped out his eyes. Blood-streaked jagged fingernails clawed the air a hairsbreadth from his face. Saliva dribbled from the jiangshi’s mouth and dripped on Yu Long’s cheek as the creature’s rancid smell clogged the air.

  Yu Long braced himself to send a telepathic blast into the jiangshi’s mind, but suddenly, the creature stopped struggling. The madness in its eyes glazed into shock before descending into terror-infused insanity.

  The high-pitched wail that emerged from its mouth was the cry of a despairing animal. It threw its head forward, striking Yu Long hard on the forehead. Yu Long’s vision exploded into a starburst before blanking into darkness. His grip on the jiangshi’s head slacked, and the creature yanked away.

  Yu Long blinked frantically until his spinning vision stabilized into normal hues. He twisted onto his stomach and grabbed his rifle, bringing it to his shoulder as he spun around.

  Shock rooted him to the ground.

  The jiangshi ran back and forth between the curved walls of the tunnel, its head lowered like a charging bull. The sound of bone smashing against concrete was buried by the escalating howls. The red smear on the tunnel walls expanded with each blow until the jiangshi tottered like a drunk man. Rivulets of blood trickled down its face. The top of its head was a bloody pulp, framed with skull fragments. Slowly, it dropped to its knees and toppled sideways, dead.

  Yu Long expelled his breath in a rush.

  Only then did the sounds of battle fill his ears. He raced back down the tunnel into a full-out battle between the jiangshi and his soldiers.

  His jaw dropped. So many jiangshi… The tangle of bodies made the count impossible, but the jiangshi far outnumbered his team of fifty men. Even with superior weapons, the police officers were pulled down, one by one, and torn apart.

  “They’re getting away!” one of the men shouted. “We can’t hold them!”

  Yu Long raised his assault rifle. He fired into a jiangshi ravaging a soldier’s body, and then into another that fled past him down the tunnels that led back to the surface. He swung his rifle around on another jiangshi—

  Hui Leng.

  His cousin, her face darkened by grime and her eyes scored by madness, stared at him.

  Yu Long’s finger trembled on the trigger. Fire, damn it.

  Hui Leng, or the creature she now was, turned and raced into the dimly lit tunnels. Almost as one, the other jiangshi followed.

  Packs. They’re moving in packs!

  A quick glance around confirmed that a third of his men had been killed and as many injured. “After them,” he ordered the ones who were still mobile. “Don’t let them reach the surface.”

  Combat boots thudded against concrete as the police officers scrambled after the jiangshi.

  “How many injured?” He turned to the squad leader.

  “Fifteen.” The man cradled his bleeding arm against his chest. “Twelve dead.”

  “Let’s get the wounded to a hospital. We’ll come back— What—?”

  The officer slumped against the tunnel wall. The grimace on his face gave way to shock as panic flooded the rationality of his gaze. His uninjured hand pressed against his temple and tensed into a clawlike grip as if to contain something trying to break out.

  “You…you’re not a psychic,” Yu Long stammered out the words.

  “I…not…” The man’s voice rose into a scream as he dropped to his knees.

  Yu Long stepped back, fear rising like an unstoppable tide. All around him, injured humans succumbed to shuang kuangxi. His chemical-laced bullets would kill them, of course, but—oh, God, no. Humans and mutants. The pandemic…

  It seemed a joke, at first, when people with dirt-streaked faces and tattered clothes poured out through the subway tunnels and onto the streets, although as a joke, it was in poor taste. Ghost month was a time to revere and appease the dead; it was not the time for costumed zombie festivals.

  The joke became less funny when police officers brandishing automatic weapons emerged from the tunnels in pursuit of the pranksters.

  The humor of the situation evaporated the moment the creatures attacked—scratching, biting, tearing. Bleeding, the injured ran into nearby buildings. The jiangshi followed, leaping through glass windows and pounding down wooden doors.

  The death toll rose. Far worse, the number of injured skyrocketed.

  In the distance, Henan Stadium—the location of Angie Ma’s concert—gleamed in the darkness, a beacon of light and sound. The jiangshi, their eyes bedazzled and ears tormented by the visual and auditory assault, bared their teeth and clenched their hands into fists, as they raced through the streets toward Henan Stadium.

  18

  In the study on the uppermost floor of the pagoda, the lightbulbs tucked behind Chinese silk lanterns filled the cozy room with a warm, orange glow. Two women seated around the table sipped tea from porcelain cups. The fragrant smell of incense wafted through the room, seeping through the narrow windows to escape into the night sky.

  The buzz of night sounds—of crickets and bullfrogs—permeated the silence in the room, a silence Xin shattered by drumming her fingertips on the table. “So, you left Wuyuan, and arrived in Shanghai.”

  Ching Shih nodded. She sat, her back straight, in the chair.

  “And?”

  “What do you mean ‘and’?”

  “Wuyuan and Shanghai are almost five hundred kilometers apart. The trip didn’t happen in a blink of an eye. What happened? How did you get to Shanghai? Surely not by public transportation.”

  “No, Wuyuan does not have a train station, and the buses would have been watched.” Ching Shih shook her head. “We did not go to Shanghai, not immediately. We went into the mountains.”

  “The mountains?”

  “The Dazhang Shan Mountains.”

  “But why?”

  “Because that’s where the first part of our trip began, where my people waited.”

  Xin’s eyebrows shot up. “Your people?”

  “The ones I convinced to help us. I had resolved to leave the day Yi Shen returned you to us, screaming and crying, but we did not leave the compound until almost six weeks later. I needed the time to mobilize my amahs.”

  “Mobilize? That’s an odd choice of words.”

  “Not for an army, which is what they were. I broke the trip into Shanghai into ten segments, and coordinated with each amah on each segment of the journey.”

  “No one knew the whole picture.”

  “Only I did. It took weeks to reach Shanghai. Most of the time Ai Li and I spent as passengers on motorcycles.”

  “Why motorcycles?”

  “Motorcycles are the primary mode of transportation in the rural parts of China. The soldiers were looking for two women and a female toddler. Larger vehicles were searched. Couples on motorcycles were ignored.”

  “They never thought you’d split up.”

  “But we didn’t split up. The motorcycles traveled alongside the van or truck carrying the amah’s relatives and a little boy.”

  Xin’s eyes widened. “Me.”

  Ching Shih nodded. “We shaved your head and dressed you in boy’s clothes. Ai Li and I were never far away, but we never held you in public—not for those few weeks of travel.”

  “You hid in plain sight.” A slow smile spread across Xin’s face. “Brilliant.”

  “Necessity.” Ching Shih waved the praise away. “Instead of heading northeast to Shanghai, we traveled southeast to the small port of Taizhou. Fishermen then carried us along the coast, up to Shanghai.”

  “You entered Shanghai by boat?” Xin’s smile widened. “Of course…The authorities would naturally search the most direct land routes to the major cities of Beijing and Shanghai.”

  “Exactly, which was why we went south, instead of north, and approached through the sea gate.” Ching Shih walked to the window. The collar of her white blouse ruffled as
she raised her face to the night breeze. “I remember our last night on that boat—a cool, summer night, much like this. I stood at the helm as the lights of Shanghai grew brighter. Silence stretched out around me, but I could imagine the noise of the city rising above the sound of waves lapping on the side of the boat.

  “Then I heard laughter from the tiny cabin. I peeked in, watching from the door as Ai Li bounced you on her lap.” Ching Shih’s gaze was distant, her eyes unfocused.

  Xin’s breath caught at the tangled swirl of happiness and pain in her mother’s smile.

  “I remember your giggles and laughter as you leaned against her and threw your arms around her. I can still recall the radiance of her smile when she looked down at you—a mother’s love.” The quiet ache in Ching Shih’s voice set up a matching ache in Xin’s chest. “Nothing compares. Nothing can replace it.”

  A soft sigh whispered out of Ching Shih as she turned to face Xin. “You were happy that day in your mother’s arms. I do not think I have ever seen you happier.”

  Xin frowned in spite of the leaden feeling in her chest. If her mother’s statement that her happiness had peaked at the age of two were true, then the rest of her life must have been truly pathetic.

  But it hadn’t been.

  It was far easier, however, to keep the conversation focused on moving forward instead of digging deep. “What happened when you entered Shanghai?” Xin asked.

  “You and I never set foot in Shanghai.”

  Xin did not miss the omission. Her eyes narrowed. “But Ai Li did.”

  Ching Shih’s expression tightened. “Yes. It’s where she was killed.”

  “What happened?”

  Her gaze dropped to the floor. “We were betrayed.”

  A scream from the courtyard ripped the peace of the night.

  Xin shot to her feet and strode to the window. Far below, the servants, like panicked chickens fleeing from red-tailed foxes, scurried across the courtyard as a tattered mob surged through the entrance.