The Dragon Book (9 page)

Rounding the final half-landing, Bob Choi went more slowly than ever, but the stairs were clear right to the fourth floor. Ahead was the lobby, its window showing a bright, wet light and falling rain. To the left was the door to Apartment 4A. Somewhere close came a dry rasping, like something heavy sliding among dead leaves. Bob Choi halted, scratching the back of his neck with gloved fingers. He opened his coat and unclipped a fastening within. With his left hand, he pulled out a long-barrelled gun, fitted with a vicious barb-headed dart.

He took a long breath and glanced around.

Opposite 4A was the door to 4C, closed and quiet. He heard nothing from there, or the other two rooms further along the lobby. From 4A, the apartment of old Mr. Yang, the rustling sound had quieted. The thing was still now, continuing its digestion.

Bob Choi sighed, stepped quickly across the lobby, drew back the fist of his right hand, and struck the door just beside the handle, where the locks were. The wood split, the frame cracked; with another blow, Bob drove the door wide open.

Before stepping through, he used the canister again. Now the mist revealed secret characters written on the threshold of the door. When Bob bent close, the inscription glowed an angry emerald green. When he stood up, it faded. Taking care not to touch the curse rune, he jumped over it, landing in the apartment safely.

The hall was short and narrow, hung with pictures, floored with dark wood. To the left was a bureau supporting a Chinese lantern, three letters, a telephone and address book, a ring of keys. Fixed to the opposite wall was a metal rail, the kind used by the elderly and infirm.

Bob Choi put away the canister, and, thrusting his right hand under his coat, drew out an ebony stick, shiny, bone-handled, long as his forearm. He moved quickly down the hall toward an open door.

The room he entered occupied the corner of the apartment block, and had a window overlooking the alley. It was cluttered with shabby furniture and belongings: a radio, a television set resting on a table, a magazine rack, a frayed rug on a linoleum floor, a wheeled walking frame. The air smelled strongly of carbolic cleaning fluid.

In an armchair in the centre of the rug, facing towards the door, sat an old man, arms bent, hands folded contentedly across the belly of his shirt. His legs, stick-thin beneath the nylon trousers, were crossed at the ankles. He wore white socks and canvas slippers. His eyes were closed; a faint smile played upon his lips. White wisps of grandfatherly hair lay upon his placid forehead and on the antimacassar of the armchair.

An old man sleeping: there was nothing to suggest otherwise.

Bob Choi looked at him. This moment was always the hardest: the cloak was just so good. Even when you’d seen the curse rune, even when you knew—

The old man’s eyes flicked open; his face sagged with bewilderment. “Who—who are you? What are you doing?” The voice was feeble, quavering. “You want my money? I have none! I am a poor man.”

Bob Choi licked his lips. The cloak was just so good. But he smelt copper sulphate and pitchstone even beneath the odour of the cleaning fluid—and he could smell blood also. He noticed that the floor of the room was newly scrubbed—here and there, it shone damp from washing.

A bucket of water sat beside an arch to the kitchen. The water was a dirty brown.

Bob Choi raised his gun.

The old man began to sit up, his mouth slack, his rheumy eyes blinking. “Sir, take my television, take my radio, but please, sir, do not hurt me!”

His stomach was grotesquely swollen beneath the tightness of his shirt.

“Please, sir—”

Bob Choi shot the old man through the chest.

The barbed dart embedded itself in the wood of the chair back, jerking the old man back so that his arms and legs leapt like a puppet’s limbs. For an instant, bright scaled coils writhed in the armchair, claws flexed in agony, teeth like steak knives snapped together—then the old man was back, floundering and clawing at the flanged iron stub protruding from the centre of his shirt, straining himself forward, seeking to break free.

Bob Choi tucked the dart-gun back inside his coat. He pressed a button on the ebony stick so that a long metal blade snicked from the end. It was made of three fused strips of steel, strong enough to shear through neck scales. He stepped towards the chair.

No blood showed in the centre of the old man’s shirt. His face was impassive. He pulled steadily at the dart that transfixed him, watching as Bob Choi approached. Suddenly, his mouth opened. The voice that emerged was similar to the tremulous voice of the old man but was now altogether stronger and more urgent. “Wait!” it said. “Listen! I will give you treasure!”

Bob Choi said nothing. He rounded the table.

“I can show you piled hoards undreamt of, caves in Persia filled with gemstones—diamonds, turquoise, lapis, and cornelian! I can give you sapphires big as human fists! You want these? Fine! Just remove the iron!”

Bob Choi walked close, stood before the old man. He adjusted the sword-stick so that he held it with both hands.

The old man rocked back and forth, plucking at the dart. “I can clothe you in silk! I will slay your enemies! You will be a prince among men!”

Before making the stroke, Bob Choi pushed the television further away across the table so that it would not obstruct his swing. He raised the sword-stick.

From the old man’s mouth spurted a six-foot jet of flame. Bob Choi’s head and upper body were enveloped; he was knocked back on his heels by the force of the blast. The plasterboard ceiling beyond him blackened and popped; his coat began to burn. But the heat-repellent layer on his skin held firm. From the midst of the inferno, he looked at the old man and steadily shook his head.

The old man threw his hands in the air in a gesture of disgust. His head fell forwards. With a gasping breath, he sucked the jet of fire back into him.

Bob Choi said, “Sit quiet now. Let us finish this.”

As he adopted the stance necessary for the decisive stroke, he heard a rustling of scales behind him. A soft voice said: “Sir, why do you hurt my grandfather?”

Bob Choi stood with his blade at the old man’s neck, his coat still smouldering, and looked back at the young woman standing at the entrance of the room. She was small, slender, neatly dressed in the European style, with a wide-boned face and big, dark eyes. Such was their vanity when they hid as females. He had never seen a plain one yet.

He thought wearily of Parsons’s warnings in the alley; of Burns on the plane from Hanoi. He thought of the difficulties of facing two of them alone.

“Miss Lau?”

“That is my present name.”

“Mr. Yang is your grandfather?”

The mouth smiled; she had pretty little teeth. “Not precisely in your terms. But we share a lineage, and bonds of honour too subtle for you to comprehend. In short, I do not want him dead.”

“He
is
dead already, by virtue of his recent crimes,” Bob Choi said. “I just confirm the sentence. You know the way it goes.”

“Crimes?” Again the smile. “What crimes are these?”

Bob Choi noticed that the old man, by a process of discreet wriggling, was succeeding in pulling himself forwards. The barbed dart was almost out of the armchair. Raising a boot, he pressed it firmly down on the distended stomach, pushing him back into the chair. Even through the leather sole, he felt the heat from the firestones lodged in the centre of the belly. The old man made a snarling noise and spoke words in a language Bob Choi did not understand.

Bob said mildly: “Three murders, perhaps four: a man, two women, and a child. Those are the crimes that bring me here. I suppose I need to kill you as well.”

She laughed—a high, delightful sound. “Murder? By what definition? You eat pork-meat, I suppose. You eat beef.”

Bob Choi rolled his eyes. “Oh, please.”

“Do you stand trial for the death of those animals?” Miss Lau said. She raised her delicate hands, small shoulders shrugging. “Should we be condemned for
our
feeding? I see not a scrap of difference. And there are
so
, so many of you. What is one human more or less in this world?”

“We are not pigs or cattle,” Bob Choi said. “We protect ourselves, as is our right.”

Slim eyebrows arched. “‘We’? ‘Ourselves’? You count yourself among them?”

“I am human enough.”

“
Are
you? You, who sniffs us out in the midst of this teeming city? Who breaks with bare fists through the door? Who withstands the blast of our breath and lives? Whose skin carries poison so that he cannot touch another man—or woman—without protection? With such enhancements,
are
you truly human still? I hardly think so,” the girl said, smiling. “Not any more. Like us, you merely
look
like one.”

Bob Choi’s mouth was screwed down at the corners now, clamped tight shut. His face was a little pale. He adjusted his grip upon the sword-stick. “I suggest you leave,” he said thickly. “While you still can. You won’t get another chance.”

From the depths of the armchair, his hands plucking furiously at the iron stub in the centre of his chest, the old man nodded. “He’s right, Granddaughter. Go, before you too get into trouble. I can deal with this.”

“You are not the
only
one who can sniff things out,” the girl said, ignoring the old man. “Let me tell you what
you
smell of, sir—aside from alcohol, of course. Solitude. You stink of it. It rolls off you like vapour from a mountaintop. You are alone always, are you not, as you go about your hunting?” She sighed. “Truly, that is a sad fate.
I
have my grandfather and he has me, and there are others of our kind in many places, concealed from you, so that even amid the swarm of men, we are not alone. But
you …
”

The old man spoke testily. “Please, Granddaughter, is this any way to talk with him? Pointing out his abject misery will only make him angrier.” He whispered to Bob Choi sidelong. “So you lack friends, family, or lovers? The solution is simple. Take the bolt from my chest and put away that stick. With the riches I give you, you will be able to
buy
whatever company you need.”

Bob Choi cleared his throat, which had become constricted. “Be still, both of you.”

The girl laughed. “Now you stink of rage.”

“Be
still
.”

The old man said, “He is uncertain of his strength, else he would have surely killed me by now. His gun is empty, Granddaughter. Listen—I give you my blessing. When he strikes me dead, seize him in your coils and crush him before he can rearm.”

“He will not strike,” the girl said. Then, to Bob Choi, quietly: “At least, I do not think so. None of the other hunters would have hesitated as you have. Despite what your masters have made you, I think you’re different—more aware of what you are and what you do. Is that not so?”

Bob Choi did not respond. He looked at the blade he held against the old man’s neck.

“Perhaps you
are
still human,” the girl went on. “In your fashion. Perhaps I was wrong before. Who knows, perhaps despite all your many …
alterations
, you might one day cast off this lonely life of yours and walk freely among the crowds out there.”

She gestured towards the window. Bob Choi, instinctively following her gaze, remembered too late that the window looked on the empty alley, not the crowded aisles of Bryce Street. He swivelled back, arm muscles flexing, to find the girl had sprung across the room; she was right beside him. Her slim, pale arm swiped at his face. He felt claws strike him, felt his doctored bones creak with the impact of the blow, found himself thrown back across the room and through the dividing wall, to land in a shower of wood and plaster against the fridge unit in the kitchen.

Bob Choi could feel blood running down the side of his face, knew the heat-resistant layer was punctured. Rising stiffly, hands working automatically to fix a new bolt into the barrel of his gun, he saw through the ruin of the wall the girl pulling the iron bolt clear of her grandfather. The old man got to his feet, a jagged hole right through him: the magnitude of the wound was such that he could not maintain his cloak successfully. His form flickered: for an eye’s blink—once, twice, and then again—his human shape was replaced by an undulating flex of bloodied coils. Now his granddaughter’s arm was around him; the cloak stabilised. Limping, staggering on his canvas slippers, he passed with the girl into the hall and out of view.

Bob Choi swore quietly to himself, smashed through the remaining fragments of wall, picked up his sword-stick from where it lay upon the rug, and strode off in pursuit, long coat billowing behind him.

Out into the lobby, where the door opposite stood open. He saw them straight ahead, going arm in arm down the little hallway of the girl’s apartment. The old man stumbled, tottered; his companion ushered him on, whispering, cajoling.

Beyond them rose a rectangle of light: balcony doors open to the sky.

This was bad, but he had them still. Without breaking stride, Bob Choi lifted the gun and aimed it directly at the back of the girl’s neck. As he did so, he crossed into the apartment, stepping onto a curse rune inscribed upon its threshold. There was an explosion of green fire: Bob Choi was blown against the ceiling, tumbling to the floor again in a cascade of plaster, glass, and sparking electrical flex.

He raised himself and limped on fast as he was able, just in time to see the girl and her grandfather crouching on the balcony balustrade, barefooted now, gripping the metal rail like birds. The girl looked back at him. Then they launched themselves off, moving straight up above the whistling bolt that Bob Choi fired, above the glistening gold and scarlet of the crowded street, above the grey buildings and dark, wet roofs, into the sky where the clouds were breaking. Arriving on the balcony with dragging, painful steps, Bob Choi watched them for as long as he was able, saw their cloaks relax at last, saw their shapes change, saw the gold scales glittering beneath the long, slow wing-beats as they wheeled into the sun. Then they were lost to him, and he was left on the balcony alone, with the crowds passing along the boulevards far below.