“My dad’s not like your mom. He’ll listen. You can trust him. And he’s smart. He’ll figure out how to get help.”
“It’ll be my word against my dad’s and who’ll believe a crazy eleven-year-old kid? If my dad didn’t kill me for talking, I’d die of shame.”
“Will you stop with the shame? You haven’t done anything.”
“You promised not to say anything to anyone, Sarah.” Belle squeezed her eyes shut.
“I haven’t told anyone. And I’ll keep my promise to use magic with you. But Belle, magic scares the shit out of me. I’d take ten Stevie Bronsons over Transition any day. We could die. I was just trying to think of another way.”
“I might as well be dead now, Sarah. I’m as scared as you—why do you think I asked you to do it with me?”
No one could be as scared as me. Dying’s not the worst thing. What if my nightmares about Transition are real? Fire licking my face, my skin and hair crackling. The horrible smell. Pain, like having my fingernails pulled out. Again and again, forever. What if that’s what happens when you try magic and fail?
“I won’t tell, Belle.”
Belle’s in a nightmare now. A real one, worse than my imaginary shit.
“We’ll use magic to stop your dad if that’s the only way. But we’re running out of time, Belle. I’ll be out of Transition in a week.”
Oh God, help us.
Near Beijing
The People’s Republic of China
Zhi woke to a featureless darkness, a coarse fabric pressing against his cheeks, the only sound the steady rhythm of tires on pavement. His fingers were sticky with blood from the cuffs that sliced his wrists. The muscles of his chest ached with each movement, as if battered with a sledge.
Taser. No need for that, except for Wu’s pleasure.
His stale breath bounced back into his face. He panted, sucking the soggy bag into this mouth, blowing it out, growing lightheaded. It took all his will to slow his breathing. The conviction he would suffocate with his next breath retreated, but only a bit. The demon lurked, temporarily caged.
He inhaled deeply. Held his breath. Released.
I can control this.
“Hey! Who’s in the car?”
He was being ignored.
“Is this bag necessary? I’m suffocating.”
Nothing.
How much time has passed?
“This is absurd. How would I escape?” He gulped for air and shoved panic back into its box.
A voice a meter or so in front of him growled, “Shut your mouth.”
“Chang, is that you? Is Eng here also?”
Wu’s using the two guards that brought me to Beijing. Keeping the circle of people who know where I am small.
“Come on, guys, I’ll do whatever you say.”
“You need to listen better,” Chang said.
Zhi heard the tell-tale click of the Taser and stiffened in fear. The voltage slammed into him, dropping him back into the abyss.
* * *
Zhi’s awareness bloomed—the tires, the hood, the doubled pain from his complaining muscles.
Can I pit these guys against each other?
“I have to take a leak.”
“Piss on yourself.”
He waited for another zap.
“Okay, but my piss is going to stink up this car.”
He tensed, wondering if he’d pushed too far. A deep sigh resonated from the left front seat. They slowed. Gravel crunched as they bumped to the right and stopped.
Divide and rule.
The front doors opened, followed a couple seconds later by the one next to him. Frigid air wrapped its arms around him. Hands like granite grabbed him by the armpits, hauled him upright, and released him. Zhi took a step, stumbled and fell to his knees. The stone hands jerked him back to his feet and held him as he steadied himself.
The steel of a handgun pressed into his temple. “I’ll take the cuffs off. Do anything but touch your dick and you’re dead.”
Bullshit. I’d be dead already if that’s what Wu wanted.
“Back off, Chang, it’s not like I’m going anywhere.” The barrel twisted against the cloth of the hood, scraping his skin. The gravel behind him crunched and he felt stinging pressure against his wrists, then freedom. He arched his back and rotated his shoulders, savoring the sharp, sweet pain of relief.
He hosed down the side of the road, creating a stinking fog in the cold night air. The press of the gun dropped away as he zipped up. His arms were jerked behind his back, his wrists pulled into a sharp metallic embrace.
Fuck me.
Different hands guided him into the back, pressing his head down to avoid the doorjamb as he sat.
“We’ll be there in an hour,” Eng said.
“Why the hell are you trying to make him feel better?” Chang asked. “It’s not like you should give a shit.”
“He hasn’t given us any trouble. No reason to make things worse.”
“You pussy. This guy’s nothing to us but a pain in the ass. Weren’t for him we’d be somewhere warm with a couple of whores.”
“Thank you, Eng. I won’t forget it.” Zhi said.
“Shut up,” Eng responded.
“See?” Chang asked.
Zhi managed a grim smile inside his cloth prison.
Chang hates me, but Eng is running the show.
* * *
The car slowed and turned to the right, dropping off the edge of the rough asphalt. They bounced and swayed, tracking first right, then left, then back again. Dirt and rocks scraped the bottom of the car.
The car dipped to a stop. The front passenger door opened and Zhi heard the piercing squeal of metal on metal.
A gate?
Chang returned to the front seat, and the car lurched forward for a few feet and stopped again. Eng got out of the car, leaving the engine running. The trunk thunked open. A couple of seconds later Eng helped Zhi from his seat, marched him a few paces, and removed the hood and cuffs.
He sucked air into his lungs and glanced around.
Eng stood next to him, holding Zhi’s wool coat and ushanka.
The headlights exposed a two-story house of crumbling gray bricks and a peaked tile roof. A chimney rose above the roof on the left side; a small porch sheltered an entrance on the right. There were two windows on the first floor, three on the second.
A ramshackle barn with a shiny white garage door spliced into one side loomed from the shadows twenty meters to the right of the house. The ground around him looked like a blast zone—no grass, no trees, shrubs, or weeds.
Zhi turned and checked behind him, wondering if Eng would object.
A four-meter chain link fence topped by razor wire spirals disappeared into the night on both sides, shimmering with a crimson glow from the car’s taillights. Chang shoved the gate closed against a metallic scream of protest, locked it with a fist-sized padlock, and rejoined them.
Eng led them toward the door of the house, using the car headlights to pick his way over the broken ground. Chang grabbed Zhi and pinched his elbow, driving a shard of pain up his arm. “You can see the sights tomorrow. Inside.”
Zhi stumbled across the rutted ground, up three rickety wooden steps, and onto the narrow porch. A biometric lock secured the steel front door. Eng pressed his thumb against a reader and entered a combination into a keypad. An LED flipped from red to green, and a deadbolt thunked back into the door. Eng shoved the door open, and gestured for Zhi to precede him.
Zhi was surprised by what he found inside. The room was warm and clean. A sofa and three chairs rested on a polished hardwood floor, arrayed around a white painted brick fireplace. A large flat panel TV hung above a rough beam mantle. Books jammed a bookcase on the right that reached to the three-meter ceiling. He walked over and examined the titles. Among the scattering of names, there were concentrations of John Connolly, Peter May, and a couple dozen by Zane Grey.
Someone is an Anglophile.
An arched op
ening led from the room toward the back of the house. Plank stairs opposite the front door rose to the upper floor. Eng took Zhi upstairs and locked him in a room secured by a steel door with a biometric lock like the one on the front door.
Zhi looked around and shivered. Glossy white tiles covered the walls, ceiling, and floor; the cloying smell of antiseptic hung in the air. No window. A shiny chrome drain cover glittered in the center of the floor. The only furniture was a bunk bed pushed to one side. A sheet and two blankets lay at the foot of the bed. Two cameras panned across the space in slow syncopation.
A doorway—with no door—led to a windowless bathroom. He walked over and peered inside. Same layout: all tile with a floor drain. A prison-style stainless sink and toilet were tucked to one side and a shower nozzle sprouted from one wall.
Zhi shivered again, this time not from the temperature.
A wet-work bed and breakfast.
* * *
It took him a couple of minutes to remember where he was when he woke. He rose and felt his way to the wall switch, flipped on the lights.
Five, maybe five-thirty.
He washed and sat on the bed, waiting to see what the day would bring. His mental clock told him it was about six when Eng entered the room, carrying a short leather strap with a small box fastened to the side. “Put this around an ankle. Don’t remove it for any reason.”
“Razor wire, cameras everywhere, and now electronic monitoring? You think I’m James Bond?” Zhi asked.
“You’re permitted access to the house and grounds during the day. Two areas are off limits: the basement, and anywhere within a meter of the fence or the barn. Breach any of these areas and you will be beaten and restricted to the bedroom.”
“What’s the plan? Keep me here until I grow old?”
“I’m to inform you only that Comrade Wu decides each day when he wakes if we are to kill you.” Eng turned and left the room with the door standing open.
Fear tiptoed down Zhi’s back.
Don’t let it show.
Zhi strutted into the hallway and down the stairs, his mouth watering from the aroma that greeted him. He found Eng and Chang in the kitchen eating large bowls of wheat noodles covered with hot pig fat. A third bowl sat waiting for him. A plate piled high with Zongzi wrapped in bamboo and various deep fried dim sum sat in the middle of the table.
Three plastic cups of steaming tea were grouped next to the platter.
He sat, pulled the bowl toward him, and began eating, pausing only to grab a dim sum or one of the pyramidal sticky rice Zongzi.
Ironic. I have never tasted anything this good.
The room was bare except for the table and a yellowed enamel cabinet with a sink tucked under a spotlessly clean window. He could see a modern stove and cabinets past an open door at the end of the room.
“We eat twice a day,” Eng said. “Be here or go hungry.”
“Who cleans up?” Zhi asked.
“Shut up,” Chang demanded.
“You need to seek help with your anger issues, Chang.”
“Fuck you.”
Zhi finished in silence, returned to his room, put on his greatcoat and hat, and returned to the kitchen. Eng was alone, collecting plates.
“I’m going outside.”
Eng shrugged. “We know where you are.”
You here, Chang in the basement, monitoring.
He left the house and strolled along the fenced perimeter, staying well away from the one-meter dead zone. Dark clouds collided overhead, spitting snow onto a thin frosting that coated the ground. The house sat near the front edge of a compound covering about two hectares. All vegetation had been removed inside the fence and in a ten-meter swath outside.
More cameras and sensors out here than in a bank.
A dense forest crowded the cleared boundary. Gray branches stretched into the bleak sky, as if seeking escape. Shrubs among the trees formed an undergrowth so thick Zhi wondered if it were even possible to push through them.
I wouldn’t get a hundred meters.
He picked his way around the fence twice and returned to the house to find Eng watching the American TV show Judge Judy. He dropped his hat and coat on a chair. “So Wu Jintao has decided to torture me after all.”
* * *
The days crawled by, laced with unfulfilled threat.
Each morning Zhi woke, washed, made his rack, and sat for an hour, waiting to be released.
Each day, Comrade Wu determined he would live for another day, unharmed.
Each day he spent more time outside, pacing the fence, avoiding the vapid American TV programs, obsessed by questions he couldn’t answer.
Why does he let me live? What has become of Crane?
Each evening he played a game of speed chess with Eng, who always won.
Each evening he returned to his tiled cell. He decided he liked Zane Grey.
* * *
Three days later, Zhi was crossing in front of the gate, about to begin his tenth circuit, when Eng came out of the house and down the porch steps. He was wearing his heavy coat, hat, and gloves.
“Coming to join me?” Zhi asked.
“Comrade Wu has ordered me to bring you to the Capital Airport.” He turned and strode toward the nearby barn where the car had been stored.
“I need to get my stuff,” Zhi said.
Eng called back over his shoulder, “And what stuff would that be? Your soap? No need to go back inside. Just wait here for me.”
Fear chased relief into hiding.
Are Wu’s orders just a ruse to make me go along for a final ride?
Eng pulled the car next to Zhi and stopped, engine running. He got out, walked over and opened the gate, and returned. “Ride up front if you want.”
Once they’d bounced down the rutted dirt path and were on the narrow asphalt road, Zhi asked, “I’ve enjoyed my visit to Miaofeng.”
“Take care, Senior Colonel. Your fondness for showing off your knowledge could be dangerous. How did you know where we are?”
“It wasn’t too tough to figure out. Miaofeng is the only place near Beijing with so many pines. Wake me when we’re close.”
Two hours later Eng’s voice woke him providing airport security with their identities. “Businessmen Dong Chang and Hao Eng. We have a private charter.”
The guard checked a list on his clipboard and waved them through.
“Chang and Eng?” Zhi asked, surprised—delighted—that Eng had used Zhi’s nicknames for his two guards. “Nice. Ten minutes later they pulled up beside a black S-series Mercedes, parked next to a Gulfstream jet.
“Comrade Wu is waiting for you. I’m to wait here in the event there are any further orders.”
Zhi started to get out of the car, paused, and looked back. “You’ve treated me with respect, Eng—Corporal Zhang. Thank you.” Eng appeared surprised, either because Zhi recalled his name and rank from their first contact in Hoeryong, or because he was thanking him.
Eng gave a brief, sharp nod.
Zhi crossed to the Mercedes and climbed into the back.
“We meet again, Senior Colonel,” Wu Jintao said.
Zhi took the seat across from Wu, assessing him through a dense fog of cigarette smoke. His mentor, superior officer, and captor appeared more frail than he had two weeks earlier, his complexion more sallow, hands less steady. He wore his usual woolen coat and a long, bright red scarf pulled tightly around his throat, as if he couldn’t get warm.
“Greetings, Comrade. I wasn’t sure I’d see you again,” Zhi said.
Wu shrugged. “Nor was I. Yet here we are.”
Zhi sat immobile, anxious, waiting.
Now I’ll learn if any seed I planted in our last meeting has found fertile ground.
“Colonel Rong is struggling to return Crane to full operational status. He appears unable to get the children to invoke magic. I cannot wait any longer. I am returning you to Hoeryong and restoring your command.”
Shimmering pinpricks of
light danced in front of Zhi’s eyes, reminding him of the time he’d fainted after he had been shot in a military training exercise. His face, slick with sweat, betrayed his attempt to maintain a placid expression.
“You honor me, Comrade.”
I’ve got you now, you miserable bastard.
“Your first priority is to rid me of the cancer that is stealing my life.”
“Of course, Comrade. I’ll need children in Transition to accomplish that and since they esc—”
“We were fortunate. The weather broke during the night of their escape and Colonel Rong was able to rescue Principal Li and the children. You will assess the situation immediately upon your return and inform me when you will conduct the magic.”
“Of course, Comrade. You understand that I’ll need some time to see that they are properly trained.”
With Rong dismissed, I can use magic to manipulate you as I wish.
Wu dismissed Zhi’s caution with a wave. “Colonel Rong will continue to serve as your second in command.”
“That’s impossible. He betrayed me. Worse, his incompetence betrayed you. Rong must be removed.”
You wily old prick. I’ll never be able to direct magic against you with Rong there.
“Your choice, Senior Colonel. You either accept Rong, or I’ll have Corporal Zhang take you into the country and put a bullet through your head.”
“One day we should discuss the meaning of choice.” Zhi sighed. “Very well, Rong is my number two.”
“Excellent.” Wu lit a new cigarette.
“What of my aide? Was he returned also?” Zhi asked.
“Unfortunately, he was killed during the escape.”
Zhi’s mind whirled. “Then with your permission, I’d like you to appoint one of the officers who guarded me as a replacement. He’ll need to be promoted to major for this senior role.”
Wu hesitated. “Do you care which one?”
“Not at all. Whomever you choose.”
There’s only one choice unless you’re willing to wait while you retrieve Chang from the safe house.
“Then take Corporal Zhang. He’s here, so we’ll need no delay.”
Now Eng will owe me.
The Scarlet Crane: Transition Magic Book One (The Transition Magic Series 1) Page 17
