Ash Mistry and the World of Darkness

by Sarwat Chadda

  It was all in vain.

  A huge bear lumbered towards the small group. A trio of snarling wild dogs blocked the doorway. Huge spiders with human faces crept over the snow on their stalking legs. The monk stood in front of the four petrified children, trying to protect them. Ash watched him speaking to them. They closed their eyes.

  Ash lowered the telescope. He couldn’t watch.

  “Oh, Ash,” said Savage. “You’re missing the best bit.”

  Ash couldn’t breathe and he grabbed the table as his legs gave away. The bottle tottered, but the glasses fell, one smashing on the frosty tiles.

  “Careful, that’s a ’53.” Savage took up the champagne. “I think this calls for a celebration, don’t you?”

  Ash’s head swam and the ground lurched as he fell to his knees. Bile fermented in his guts, choking him as it climbed up his throat. He closed his eyes, but all that did was bring the images flashing back. The monk torn apart. The little kids closing their eyes as the demons prepared to devour them. The old man trying in vain to protect them with his feeble body.

  Savage’s laugh.

  Tears blinded him and his stomach clenched. He fell to his knees as the pain doubled, the knots twisting tighter and tighter.

  Once, in a fortress far to the south, Savage had told him how jackals prey on the weak, how he’d set his demons on Lucky unless Ash did what he said. Ash had imagined the horror of such a feeding frenzy, but had never thought to actually see it. And this was just a fraction of what lay ahead.

  He clawed at the ground, despairing for those kids he had been helpless to save.

  “The drug’s being delivered to key locations throughout the world,” said Savage. “It’s not been easy to infect the entire planet, but I’ve had the time and money to do it.”

  “I’ll stop you,” said Ash.

  Savage didn’t appear to be listening. The cork popped. “Ah, only two glasses. You’ll have to go without, I’m afraid.”

  Feeling along the ground, Ash’s hands touched something sharp. Through eyes blurred with tears he spotted something narrow and crystalline – the broken stem of the champagne glass. The tip was as sharp as a dagger. Instinctively his fingers wrapped around it.

  Ash wiped his face and struggled to his feet. He had one shot.

  “There’ll be a period of anarchy, but that will help separate the weak from the strong,” said Savage, his back to Ash as he poured the champagne. “Eventually the newly reborn rakshasas will rally to me and then we’ll start our work in earnest. With Ravana gone, I now rule the demon nations.”

  “People will fight against you,” said Ash.

  “And destroy their own populations? I don’t think so. No, society will collapse and region by region, country by country, I will come and establish my rule. Humanity will have to live more simply, but under the dominion of my rakshasas they’ll keep in line. It might take a hundred years, but that’s not a problem for me any more.”

  Ash glared at Savage’s back. Every ounce of concentration was focused on his mission. He felt a tremor run through him.

  Savage turned to Rani, holding two drinks, and passed one to her. “Cheers. Here’s to a reign of a thousand years. At least.” They clinked glasses.

  Ash tightened his grip, his thumb testing the jagged tip of the glass. “A thousand?” he whispered. He stepped closer. “Not if I can help it.”

  Savage turned. “I’m sorry?”

  “You should be.”

  Ash thrust the shard upwards, a perfect killing blow. Straight and fast. It tore into Savage’s neck just below the jaw and went in all the way to the base. Savage grabbed Ash’s wrist, but it was too late.

  Ash pulled away as Savage stumbled. He still tried to hold on to his glass and the champagne sloshed over him.

  Rani smashed into Ash, knocking him against the wall, and she was hissing at him, her fangs just centimetres from his neck.

  But Ash didn’t care. He just watched Savage slump to the floor, blood pouring from the fresh wound. It came in a torrent, covering his shirt, his sleeve, pooling on the frosty flagstones. With slippery hands Savage got his nails around the base of the glass and pulled it out. Big mistake, as now there was nothing plugging the wound. Blood spurted in time with his heartbeat.

  Savage gasped as pink foam filled his mouth, staining his perfect teeth grotesquely. There was a final gurgle. His hands fell to his sides and the champagne glass rolled away.

  Ash didn’t need Marma Adi or any special power to know the blow had been fatal.

  Savage was dead.

  Chapter Seventeen

  Elaine’s contacts at the airport hadn’t stretched to an upgrade, and after fourteen hours packed into Economy, wedged between a snoring businessman and a kid who played his Game Boy from take-off to touchdown, Ashoka looked and felt like a zombie. He’d not slept at all and was now paying the price.

  At night Hong Kong looked as if it was made of jewels. The amber-lit streets shone like rivers of gold and the skyscrapers sparkled like a dragon’s hoard, emerald and sapphire, diamond and onyx and ruby. Spires soared, shining citadels of glowing colours and dazzling patterns. It made London look like some provincial village.

  Massive tankers and freighters crossed the harbour to and from ports in the New Territories and the world beyond. These ships had sailed ever since Britain had seized the islands from the Chinese in the nineteenth century, and though the age of pirates and the Opium Wars were long over, trade still flourished, but where once it had been tea, silver, silk and opium, now it was electrical goods, mobile phones, cars and the machines of comfort – all the toys the West couldn’t do without.

  Ashoka yawned as they entered the vast Lantau Airport and wound their way through its labyrinthine glass corridors. Through the windows he saw the forest of skyscrapers of Hong Kong Island.

  Parvati straightened her sunglasses as they made their way through customs. “It’s changed since I was here last.”

  “When was that?”

  “Late nineteenth century.”

  “Business or pleasure?”

  “The British had established Hong Kong as their colony and it was the base of their opium trade. Savage was one of the main players behind it, and I had hoped to track him down. I didn’t get him, but I did make a few friends and am owed a couple of favours.”

  “What sort of friends? Triads? Tongs? Chinese mafia types? I’ve watched practically every John Woo movie ever made.”

  “Dragons.” Parvati headed for the exit.

  Ashoka shook his head. “Sorry, I must have misheard. I thought you said ‘dragons’.”

  “That’s right.”

  Ashoka stood there, struggling to understand what he’d just been told. “Dragons?” he said again, following Parvati out of the airport.

  Minutes later they were in a taxi. If Hong Kong was awesome from above, it was mind-blowing at street level. The skyscrapers gathered over the sky like an army of cyber-titans, clad in glass, steel and beams of light. People jostled and crowded out every pavement; there were shops, stalls and outside tables with diners queuing, and all around huge billboards shone with a million dazzling lights. Signs were in Chinese and English and were everywhere. Ashoka peered out of the window as they crossed over a bridge and watched a helicopter landing on a cruiser, which drifted among the sampans and ferries like a vast white whale among minnows.

  Parvati directed the driver in Cantonese as he came off the bridge on to a slip road. Suddenly the scenery changed to shambolic, rundown blocks with steel bars on the windows, mountains of rubbish piled outside the doors and dimly lit teahouses and restaurants. The dazzling wealth of Hong Kong still shone above them, but there were deep shadows too, all the darker by contrast with the lights above. Here a vast, winding under-city existed beneath the flyovers and bridges.

  How had he ended up here? Just a few days ago the biggest problem Ashoka had ever had in his life was asking Gemma out on a date. Which he’d utterly failed to do. One thing w
as for sure – if he got through this, he was totally going to ask her out. Somehow all the school stuff, all the ‘who’s cool and who’s not’ stuff seemed so not important any more. Not when his family’s lives were at stake and there were rakshasas and dragons roaming the world. Dragons. Insane. Insanely insane.

  “Where are we going?” asked Ashoka. “Guess it’s not the Hilton?”

  “Nathan Road. It’s the home of the Indian population in Hong Kong. Somewhere for us to hide out, and the only place east of Singapore you’ll get a decent curry.”

  Ashoka looked in the rear-view mirror. “Is that Mercedes following us? It’s been with us since the airport.”

  “You sure?”

  “Pretty sure. Recognise the model. Dad wanted one just like it. Mum vetoed it, said it was a mid-life crisis thing.” They turned into a tunnel.

  “Turn around,” ordered Parvati. “Now!”

  The driver slammed on the brakes.

  A car blocked the road ahead. Its headlights glared through their car’s windscreen and Ashoka could just make out the men inside. Men with guns.

  The Mercedes stopped behind them, pressing its bumper up against theirs.

  “I thought you said you’d made friends when you were here?” said Ashoka.

  “I thought I had,” muttered Parvati. “Maybe they just want to say hello.”

  “They don’t look very friendly.”

  Ashoka and Parvati opened their doors and stepped out slowly.

  The driver ran for it, and they didn’t stop him.

  Ashoka surveyed the scene. Seven men, four emerging from the big black SUV in front and three from the Merc behind. Smart black suits and slick hairstyles and shades that just screamed ‘gangsta’ right down to the tattoos that peeked from beneath the double cuffs and collars of their ghost-white shirts.

  “I bet they’re packing some serious gats,” whispered Ashoka.

  “What?”

  “Gats,” he repeated with a trigger motion.

  Even through her dark glasses, Ashoka could feel Parvati rolling her eyes.

  The SUV tilted as its final passenger got out. He had to squeeze out of the door and the ground shook as he dropped to the tarmac.

  This guy looked like he ate sumo wrestlers. His huge jowls wobbled with each step, his stubby fat arms stuck out from his almost spherical body. His skin had an unhealthy, oily yellow-greenish tinge and warts covered his face. His eyes were a pair of ping-pong balls stuck under a heavy brow, swollen and ready to pop. Ugly veins pulsed along his temples and along his forehead.

  He glanced at Ashoka and dismissed him with a click of his tongue. He stopped before Parvati. Gold-plated teeth gleamed. “I am Toad, chamberlain to the Court of Dragons. You are not welcome here, princess.”

  “I want to talk to Ti Fun,” Parvati insisted. “It’s important.”

  “That’s not possible.”

  Parvati took off her glasses and the tip of her forked tongue touched her lips. “I don’t want any trouble.”

  Ashoka backed away a step or two. Parvati looked as if she was about to unleash a whole galaxy of trouble right now. Much of it bone-splintering. If this Toad guy was smart, he would give her what she wanted, now.

  But he wasn’t, and didn’t. He snapped his fingers. “Escort the princess and the mortal somewhere discreet. Do them extreme harm, then put what remains on a plane back to India.”

  Pistols came out. One man held his sideways, and Ashoka wondered if he wasn’t the only John Woo fan here. Then he forced a reality check. People. Pointing guns. At him. Super-bad thing. One of the gangsters took Ashoka’s arm. He didn’t resist. Another two stood behind Parvati. One pushed her, his pistol wedged between her shoulder blades. She did resist.

  “I really wouldn’t do that if I were you,” said Ashoka.

  The man pushed her again.

  Parvati twisted, spinning almost a full circle and sweeping her arms like whips. The man’s shades flew off as her fist shattered his jaw and she used his body to deliver a kick that lifted the second guy two metres off the ground. She caught a pistol as it whirled out of his hand.

  Ashoka ducked behind the taxi before bullet time started.

  Instead there was a heavy thud and a long, evil hiss.

  Ashoka waited. And waited. Where was the gunfire? Wasn’t there meant to be screaming, the sound of shattering glass and bodies flying spinning through the air perforated with bullets and such? Instead there was a tense silence. Like a storm waiting to break.

  “Drop your guns,” said Parvati. “I won’t ask twice.”

  A dozen or so weapons clattered on to the ground.

  Ashoka slowly stood up.

  Toad lay on his side. Parvati crouched behind him, using him as cover. She jammed her pistol barrel behind his earlobe.

  “Are you all right, Ashoka?” she asked. “You haven’t fainted again?”

  “No!” he snapped. Right now? Feeling about five centimetres tall. Still, at least he still had his pants up, metaphorically, unlike these guys. Their brains were still trying to work out how they’d just lost.

  “Pick up a pistol. Take the Beretta – it’s lighter and you should be able to handle it,” she said, still not moving from behind Toad.

  “Are you saying I should take the girls’ gun?”

  “Just get it, and put a bullet in each of the Mercedes tyres. Then the same with the taxi. Then collect all the other firearms and put them in the back of the SUV. Understand?”

  It was heavier than he’d thought it would be. Ashoka had never fired anything more than an air pistol. The metal was cold and the grip hard and cumbersome. Ashoka carefully pointed it at the first tyre.

  What did you do? Line the rear sight up with the front? He held the pistol with both hands and squeezed the trigger.

  The gunshot boomed and bounded a dozen times between the tunnel walls, the echo taking its time to die. Ashoka’s ears rang. Smoke unfurled from the barrel and the tyre had a fat hole in it. “Cool,” he said. “Let’s do that again.”

  Seven bullets later and Ashoka had done it. He gathered up the rest of the weapons and chucked them in the back of the SUV. “Now what?”

  “Get in the passenger seat. You …” she gestured at the gangster nearest the SUV, “… drive.”

  Ashoka got in and a minute later the vehicle dipped as Toad clambered into the back.

  Parvati joined him, squashed into the seat as Toad filled most of it. “Tell the driver to get a move on,” she said.

  Toad sneered, but only until Parvati shoved the barrel up his nostril. “Take us to the Hurricane.”

  Chapter Eighteen

  They drove into the heart of Hong Kong Central. Bars heaved; shops with screens twenty metres high threw colours over the crowds. It was 2am, but busier than London during rush hour. Black was the new black and the men wore tailored suits and the women … well, the women made Ashoka blush in strange ways. Were those skirts or belts they were wearing? Didn’t they feel cold?

  Parvati kicked the back of his chair. “Did you hear any of that?”

  “Er, course I did. Actually no. What?”

  “We’re getting out. Focus.”

  The car turned a corner and entered the underground garage to one of the skyscrapers. There weren’t many cars down here, but those that there were counted for more than most. Ashoka gazed at Ferraris, two Lamborghinis, a couple of Porsches, a McLaren, an Aston Martin and a Bentley. A few he didn’t recognise looked like they were out of a science magazine, one-of-a-kind concept cars, too expensive, too far out ever to make production lines.

  The SUV stopped and Parvati jabbed Toad. “Out you hop.”

  He grimaced, but did as she said. Parvati followed, the pistol left on the seat. She saw Ashoka reach for it. “Leave it.”

  “But we might need it.”

  She glanced towards the steel doors of the lift. “We’re going to see one of the four dragons, Ashoka. Leave it.”

  Toad typed in the PIN and a few second
s later the lift doors opened. Ashoka and Parvati peered in. It was compact. She turned to Toad. “You’d better take the stairs.”

  Ashoka’s heart was beating hard as the numbers on the display pinged. The lift accelerated past the thirtieth floor and kept on climbing. “Tell me about this Ti Fun.”

  “He’s one of the four elementals. Lord of the skies and winds. The others are lords of the earth, fire and water. Ti Fun rules southern China. The rest of the Middle Kingdom is divided between the other three.”

  “Dragons. Wow.” Ashoka couldn’t get past that. The counter flickered past fifty and the lift wasn’t slowing. “I mean, wow.” He leaned against the glass. “I can’t breathe.” He adjusted his collar. Didn’t help. “I think it’s the altitude.”

  “No. It’s fear. Don’t be surprised if you soil yourself. Most humans do when they first meet a dragon. You might faint.” She looked at him, slightly worried. “Or have a heart attack. Try not to die.”

  “Maybe I should wait downstairs and keep an eye on Toad?” His legs were shaking.

  The lift slowed. They approached the two-hundredth floor. It stopped at 201.

  “Too late for that,” said Parvati as the doors slid open.

  It could have been an art gallery. Spotlit marble pedestals stood like soldiers over a floor of dark granite. There were statues, vases, ancient Chinese pottery, and Ashoka recognised a trio of life-size terracotta warriors from the famous dig at Xi’an. Uncle Vik had promised to take him there one day, to see the tomb of the first Chinese emperor. Columns rose up into the high ceiling, inlaid with mosaic dragons of gold, sapphire, emerald and ruby, swooping through glimmering mother-of-pearl clouds. Incense burned, thin weaves of smoke unwinding from sticks sitting in small vases and pots. Something fluttered overhead and Ashoka glimpsed a leathery wing darting among the darkened column heads. Eyes blinked down at him. Floor-to-ceiling windows gave a vertiginous view over the city. The streets lay far below in the canyons between the towers, and humanity seemed very small and insignificant from up here.