He rested his head on the glass and let tears slide down his face.
* * *
Chapter Eleven
"I brought you the list of buildings that Danny Lok owned," Lumi said, pushing a sheaf of papers at Carol.
They'd met up at Ming Ue's as dusk fell, after Seth had helped Carol restore her apartment.
Seth realized as he and Carol walked down from Russian Hill to Chinatown that her apartment had gotten off lightly. Stores on Powell had wares and debris all over the floor, owners trying to gather everything up and secure the doors. Electricity was off for many blocks, and cars and buses filled roads, unmoving.
Most people were walking, trying to get into stores to buy up fresh water, worried but not in a panic. The earthquake, Carol informed him, hadn't been a big one. Things would return to normal soon.
Ming Ue had thrown open the doors of her little restaurant, letting neighborhood people or stranded tourists come and eat and drink for free. The old woman had given Carol a half-belligerent, half-anxious look when she related this, but Carol only nodded absently and said it was a good idea.
"Are you feeling all right?" Ming Ue asked her.
Carol didn't bother to respond. While Shaiming and a few waitresses filled tables with little plates of dumplings and carried empty dishes back to the kitchen, Lumi handed Carol the list of places that Daniel Lok had owned.
Seth looked over Carol's shoulder at the neat paper that showed about twenty different addresses. "Now that he's dead, who will take over his territory?" he asked.
"He has family." Lumi leaned his elbow on the table. He was tall and raw-boned, and wore blue jeans and a shirt with iron maiden printed on it. "Nephews and nieces, some of them not too keen that Great-uncle Danny was a criminal. But now that he's gone, his rivals are going to come out of the woodwork and claim his territories. We might have a gang war on our hands."
The music of Carol's thoughts changed to a tarnished clamor. "That's not what I meant to do."
"Carol, he had a heart attack," Lumi said. "Besides, he was a very, very bad guy."
"And now more bad guys are going to fight over what he left," Carol said. "I don't think the Asian community of San Francisco wants to be fought over right now."
"So stop them," Ming Ue cut in.
Carol turned a startled face to her. "What?"
"If you don't want the Tongs to take over Chinatown or destroy it while they're fighting each other, stop them. You have the power. You have a fire dragon. Protect us."
Carol looked at Seth. "Could you do that? This place and mine are protected by dragon marks. Could you put them over every shop in Chinatown?"
Ming Ue answered for him. "The power of a dragon mark lessens if it's spread around too much. That's what Malcolm says anyway. Witch marks can be put everywhere, but they're not as strong as dragon marks. But you can do it yourself, Carol. You command dragons. You can use their power to stop Danny Lok's rivals."
"You have a lot of faith in me."
"It's not faith. It's certainty."
Carol gave her an impatient look. "What would you like me to do first, find the Dragon Master and defeat him or save Chinatown from organized crime?"
"You must do both. You have the means."
"Grandmother�"
Ming Ue firmed her mouth. "You have Seth to look over these places for the Dragon Master. You must let him while you see Zhen to learn your powers. Then you and Seth can mark the shops of our people."
"As easy as that, is it?"
"She's right," Seth broke in quietly. "Finding the Dragon Master is not as important as you being strong enough to face him when we do."
Carol deflated. "You might be right, but I don't want you going anywhere near him. What if he tries snaring you again?"
The music in Seth's head shimmered. "My bond to you is tight now. He won't be able to break it."
"How can you know that? When we were in Union Square you almost disappeared."
"Because your hold on me hadn't fully formed. Now we are so twined that no one else can call me."
"Are you sure?" Lumi asked. "Last year Malcolm got bound with his true name by two people at the same time. He said it almost ripped him apart."
"Malcolm is a black dragon, an ordinary dragon," Seth explained. "I'm a fire dragon."
Lumi gave him a wry look. "I so don't want to be in the room when you call Malcolm an ordinary dragon. Or maybe I do." He chuckled.
"The fire dragon is something different from the others." Ming Ue said. "I feel it."
Carol bit her lip as she turned to Seth. "Are you sure?"
He squeezed her hand. "I will ask Malcolm to assist me, and you will have Axel protect you while I'm gone."
"You worked this all out nicely."
"With Lok dead, it's logical that others will move into his territories," Seth said. "Dragons do the same. If the next man finds the Dragon Master, he will use him or be destroyed by him. Better I find the Dragon Master before that happens."
"And if you find him, then what?"
"You kill him." Seth stood up while Carol gaped at him. "So you must grow strong while you can."
Carol got out of her chair, her brown eyes filled with worry. "Damn, this just gets worse."
Seth leaned down and kissed her, closing his eyes to savor her taste.
"I'll locate him," he said. "Not fight him. Not yet."
"While you wait for me to take my Dragon Master lessons?"
Seth brushed his tongue over her lips. "When you are ready, nothing will be able to stop you."
She had such a beautiful face, oval and slender, her almond-shaped eyes deepest brown. Her full red lips made him want to kiss her again, and he touched her mouth with his fingertip before he made himself take up the lists from the table and depart.
Malcolm wasn't waiting in the middle of Union Square as Seth had asked Lumi to tell him to be. Saba was.
"Malcolm went to Dragonspace," the witch said before Seth could ask. "He said he had to look something up in his Archive."
"The Dragon Archive?"
"It's an impressive place," she said, dark eyes amused.
Seth snorted. "Only black dragons crave knowledge for its own sake."
"So what do fire dragons crave?"
"To be left alone."
Saba put her hands on her hips and cocked her head at him. Like Carol, she had black hair and brown eyes, though her eyes were more rounded, and her hair was cropped short. She was also shorter than Carol and curvier, and she wore a cropped white top and blue jeans instead of the blouses and skirts Carol favored.
"You don't seem to want to leave Carol alone. You're sleeping with her, aren't you?"
Seth warmed, thinking of Carol writhing under him on the carpet. "I've mated with her, yes. And enjoyed it."
Saba started to laugh, then shook her head. "Dragons."
"What about dragons?"
"Lisa would know what I meant. Now, how about we go look for the Dragon Master?"
"I wanted Malcolm's help."
"You've got me instead. Before you say I can't possibly, let me tell you, I do one hell of a locator spell."
"I don't think those will work on the Dragon Master," Seth said. "Besides I have these."
Saba took the lists, looking at the addresses with a grimace. "Most of these are on the south side of town. Figures. I don't want to take too long over this�my daughter is at Lisa's, but with incubi and gangs roaming around�"
Seth fully understood. "I welcome your help."
"A polite dragon?" Saba said with a grin. "That makes a change."
You have come to learn from me?' Zhen wrapped his wrinkled hands over his cane. He looked tired and tense, but he gestured Carol to a chair with a shaking hand.
"I came because I'm afraid." Carol sat down stiffly as he shuffled to the hot plate in his tiny back room and prepared tea. "It's coming too easily to me. I wanted to kill Danny Lok, and then he was dead."
Zhen nodded as he poured hot wa
ter out of an ancient kettle into an equally ancient iron teapot.
"The power comes not from your fear but your anger."
Carol remembered her rage. "His bodyguards shot up my restaurant. Of course I was angry."
"Most people would be afraid. They would scream and duck as I heard everyone else did but you and Seth."
"For some reason, I knew I didn't need to. It was like Seth was a part of me. Like I could swing my arm down, and he'd swoop the exact same way." She moved her arm in demonstration. "I don't want to be able to do that."
"Your tie to him is very strong."
"That doesn't mean I should use him as some kind of weapon. He's a person�well, a living being anyway. That's not right."
Zhen sat down and poured fragrant oolong tea into a delicate cup he placed in front of her. "You are a Dragon Master. That means you master dragons. Dragons to you are weapons, extensions of your power. In ancient times, the Dragon Masters were kept by the emperors, so they could harness the power of dragons. That was when dragons easily came and went between this world and Dragonspace."
Carol's interest stirred. "Why didn't everyone have a Dragon Master, if dragons were so sought after?"
Zhen lifted his handleless cup of tea. He still seemed on edge, but he answered readily. "Because there were only one or two Dragon Masters alive at a time. It runs in families, but not always from one generation to the next. Ming Ue has some of the power, which is why dragons like her so much, but your mother was one of the powerful ones. And the last few days have proved you more powerful still." He gave her a significant look over his cup.
Carol sighed and sipped tea, letting the soothing taste relax her somewhat.
"I don't want this, but I've realized today that it's always been inside me. All my life I've gone for what I wanted without hesitation. I never doubted, never stopped, never asked what others wanted. My business was my life, and I saw no reason to stop when I was so good at it, though I told myself I was doing it to repay Ming Ue and Shaiming." She drank more of the tea. "But that was the Dragon Master, craving power, wasn't it?"
"Yes, it was. Power is neutral, Li Mei. It is neither good nor evil. It is what you do with it that makes it one or the other."
"So me wanting Danny Lok dead was all me? Thanks, I feel so much better."
"You were defending yourself and your territory and everyone within your protection. You acted instinctively�he had come prepared to kill you if necessary. And in the end, you stopped Seth from killing him."
"I suppose that's true." The tea was good. She lifted the teapot and poured more into her cup. "We never know what we'll do when it comes down to it, do we?"
"Now that you do know you can decide what you will do, how you will use your power?"
She sighed. "I'm not sure about that. It wells up inside me like a black bubble, and it comes out before I want it to. I'm afraid of hurting people, like Grandmother or Lumi."
"You do have the potential for destruction, Li Mei. And you have to face it. You are very dangerous."
"It's funny, as a businesswoman, I always wanted to be thought dangerous. But not to my friends and family;"
"Then let me teach you to control it."
"That's why I'm here." She looked into her cup. "This is excellent tea, Mr. Zhen."
He looked modest. "Thank you. I blend it myself�a recipe passed down through my family."
"Do you still have family?" She'd never really thought about the Junk Man being married and having children.
"I did, once. They are all gone. Now it is only me."
Her heart twisted. "I'm sorry."
"Do not feel sorrow for me. I have many friends, and I am blessed. I go to your grandmother's for mahjong every Thursday and enjoy it very much."
Zhen and Ming Ue had been playing mahjong for years. The click of mahjong tiles on the table figured in Carol's earliest and most comforting memories. Ming Ue, Zhen, and Shaiming had played with Lisa's grandmother, and the quiet Shaiming had often won the pot.
"Would you like to play now?"
Carol raised her brows. "I thought you were going to teach me to control my powers."
Zhen smiled, his face folding into wrinkles. "But a game of mahjong will be just the thing to clear the mind."
"We need four people." Carol leaned back in her chair. "And I'm tired. It's been a bad day."
"You are tired because I put a mild sedative in the tea."
Carol blinked at him, then realized that her limbs were limp and relaxed. "What did you do that for?"
"It will be easier for you to focus if you are not, as Americans say, stressed. The sedative will take the edge off your panic, and enable you to do the exercises without fear."
"You might have warned me."
"Then you would not have drunk the tea. There is no need to fear me. You could kill me with the flick of your finger, and I could not harm you. Not that I would." He rose, reaching above the table to pull down a worn box heaped with mahjong tiles. "I have asked your grandmother and Shaiming to join us."
"Grandmother will never leave the restaurant�"
She broke off as Ming Ue hobbled through the curtains that separated the back room from Zhen's store. Shaiming was right behind her, helping Ming Ue to the table to sit next to Carol.
"We ran out of food," Ming Ue announced. "So I closed up. It's seven anyway, and we never have much of a dinner crowd."
Carol's restaurant management instincts kicked in. "Grandmother, if we're out of food, we have to stock for tomorrow."
"Sit down, my girl. No one will be surprised if we don't open tomorrow. We'll take the day to fix the damage and restock. I'm sure everyone will remember how generous was Ming Ue's Dim Sum house and we'll have a crowd. That's how you build customer base, Li Mei. Kindness and loyalty. Never mind what they taught you at that lofty school."
Carol sat back, her argument evaporating. Ming Ue was right, and the tea had made Carol gloriously relaxed. "Have you heard from Seth?" she asked.
"Not yet," Ming Ue said, settling herself. Zhen took the chair opposite Carol, and Shaiming sat on Carol's right. "He'll call when he has something to report. Or Malcolm will. Or they'll come to us�dragons never much trust cell phones."
Carol remembered Seth crushing her phone in his strong fingers. She hadn't rushed to replace it. "True."
"I don't blame them," Zhen said. "Shall we build?"
Carol automatically helped turn the tiles facedown and shuffle them. Ming Ue had taught Carol and her cousin Lumi how to play mahjong long ago, and the four had often whiled away a winter's night in a quiet game.
They built a square of tiles two high, all four of them working in silence. Carol let the mundane task soothe her, losing herself in the cool of the tiles under her fingers, the quiet click that brought back so many memories of childhood.
"That is exactly right," Zhen said across from her. "Focus on what you are doing, nothing else."
The tea helped. Carol wasn't exactly sleepy, but the edges of her world had smoothed. She felt calmer and more relaxed than she had in a long time.
They finished constructing the wall and selected tiles. Carol looked at her hand and saw that she'd drawn many dragons. Black and red dragons writhed on the ivory-colored surfaces as she stood the tiles up on the table.
Black and red, she thought. Malcolm and Seth. The other color of dragon in Zhen's mahjong set was green, but when Carol turned one over, it shimmered and became deepest gold. Caleb.
"When the Dragon Masters worked for the Han emperors," Zhen said. "The emperor would use ink to draw the dragon they wanted to command, then the Dragon Master would sing its name. Once the dragon had done their bidding, the Dragon Master released it. Much later they used mahjong tiles. Look at the dragons, Li Mei, and learn them. You can call them any time you want, or you can just look at them."
"Will it hurt them?"
"No, child. Learn them and understand them and let them go. Be separate from them. You call, but they don't be
come a part of you."
Carol studied the black dragon tile. The lines of its body twisted and moved before her eyes, then settled again into an outline of a snarling black dragon with silver eyes.
Malcolm, she whispered inside her head, and then, just like that, she knew his true name.
The notes of it danced on the edge of her hearing, and she focused on them until they became clear.
She felt Malcolm's sudden fury, dim and far away. His mind was dark and ancient, holding an amazing array of calculations and analytical thought, his intelligence cold enough to form icicles. She also felt the newness of his human emotions, foremost his love for Saba and his baby daughter.
He snarled at her. No.
He fought so furiously that Carol's instinct was to close her grip, to hold him down.
"You don't have to," Zhen said. "Know his name and him, but step away."
Carol unclenched her hand. The coiled band around Malcolm loosened, and she studied the tile, stilling her mind.
You are my friend, she said softly. I'd never hurt you.
Malcolm snarled again, though with less ferocity. I'll never bow down to you.
"I'll never ask you to. Promise."
Then go away. I'm busy trying to figure out how to save your ass.
Get back to me on that, will you?
Malcolm didn't answer, only blew out his breath in a dragon whuff. Carol turned her black dragon tiles facedown, one by one, and let go.
Caleb answered her call more quickly. Don't mages have anything better to do than bother dragons who are minding their own business ?
I'm practicing, Carol answered.
Do I look like a guinea pig? Go pester Malcolm.
I did already. Carol sang Caleb's name, its golden chimes amazingly beautiful and wrapped in warrior strength. She sensed silver threads within the gold, his love for Lisa.
Caleb said grumpily, I'm so impressed.
He was easier to release. Carol turned his tiles facedown, breathing a farewell. She felt Caleb's surprise when she unwound him from her, then he was gone.
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