Chapter 37: The supernatural hold summit once more
No distortion, the faintest of motions of the crosshairs, Rex was in his zone, reticle centered again on the bridge of Dian Mu’s nose. This time, however, he was tempted to pull the trigger regardless. If Dian Mu was dead, her powers died with her, her part in Zau’s plan died with her. Then a quick shift of the scope, another gentle squeeze on the trigger and Zau’s head would no longer exist, dragon or no, and with it would go his plan, his will to make it occur through another vector.
Rex was once again in his aerie on the roof of the building across Huangsha Avenue from Liwan Lake, sensors and cameras around him watching his back in the absence of a spotter proficient with binoculars and assault rifle watching out for him. He would have liked to have Joyla here with him, sure she was competent at the necessary, and equally sure that she would be safer here than where she was again, sitting in flowing silks in the Panxi restaurant a few meters from a summit of two absurdly powerful beings.
Not that he’d seen evidence of any particular powers from either of them. He had witnessed Dian Mu’s power of insane speed and braking, but that was available to anyone who wanted to pony up the pounds for a Tesla Roadster. And Zau appeared to be gaining the power of turning into a caricature of an ancient Chinese villain, his long wispy beard and moustache appearing to have grown in length and increased in whiteness since Rex had first met him, his nails absurdly long talons which Rex supposed they actually were, garb having become what Rex supposed was traditional centuries ago. But fast driving and bad grooming were hardly supernatural attributes; Rex had met a hundred men and quite a few women who shared them.
However. However. After the demonstration with the self-wielding hanbo in the dojo a few weeks ago, Joyla had demonstrated more of her arsenal for him. The sight of a bo shuriken thrown at speed with a violent but perfectly executed flick of her arm and wrist toward a wall 90 degrees from the target crank through a tight turn, accelerate and weave through an assemblage of stacked furniture and embed itself in bull’s eye of the thick oak stump was a reminder to him of the adage about Horatio.
And then there were the gracefully flowing silks, sheer drapes on her slender form, shifting with the slightest draft. She’d handed him a 12-centimeter, double-edged knife, wickedly pointed and razor sharp, told him to stab her. He’d demurred, she’d slapped him lightly, a blow he hadn’t seen coming, reminded him who exactly ended up on the bottom the last time they’d tussled in earnest, asked sweetly after the bruises on his leg, sternum. She put one foot and both hands behind her.
He shrugged, settled into a knife fighter’s stance, left hand knuckles out protecting his throat, knife inverted in an icepick grip. He came in fast and low, fainting a side kick, a jab with his left, then lashed out in a puncturing back-handed stab at her heart, disabling but not fatal.
Joyla didn’t move. She ignored the feints. Her silks didn’t ignore the knife. They reached out, languidly it seemed, wrapped around the point and blade, halted the knife before it came within a centimeter of her chest, her left leg behind her flexing slightly as she absorbed the power of his blow. Her hands came out from behind her back and flowed toward him, the silk extended by the motion. Then she froze. Her left hand had a rigid silk spike twenty centimeters long that stopped a centimeter from his left eye. The right hand had an equally long, equally motionless spike pressed against his carotid.
He stopped breathing. She stepped back, dropped her arms, the silk once again obeying the laws of physics and weaves, gravity and fabrics. It was unmarked, the cloth that had been bunched around the blade of his knife not even dimpled, somehow adding an insult to the injury of being so easily defeated when he had held the only visible weapon. He started breathing again.
And so he trusted her word, that these were two beings of supernatural puissance, and that bringing a Barrett .50 caliber sniper rifle to bear against a pair of small and unarmed people in a restaurant was a reasonable precaution, very much not bringing a gun to a knife fight, but hoping that he could get a lucky shot in if it proved necessary. And he was still tempted to pull the trigger twice, make the two heads across the lake disappear in a vapour of reddish mist. But he couldn’t see through the wall behind them, and that wall would be vapour to the half-pound BMG round, nothing compared to its ability to punch through brick and concrete walls. It wasn’t clear what was behind that wall, but he had to assume that it was people, perhaps more families such as the Germanic couple and children he’d seen last time.
No, shooting was a last line of defense, only to be undertaken if things went seriously sideways below and collateral damage was less important than the collateral damage two gods would inflict on all and sundry should things get ugly.
And so he watched, calm, ready to squeeze the trigger, as Dian Mu reached into the slender vertical messenger bag she wore today, pulled out an iPad, slid it across the table to Zau. He watched as it lit up, impossible to make out videos playing, lights flashing from its surface on the table. He watched as Zau’s face changed, bulged, grew, fangs growing out of the slightly scaled snout that was forming, eyes grew to the sides of saucers. He watched as a rill of saliva fell from Zau’s mouth to the table, ignored. He watched as Zau’s taloned hands grew as well, claws hooking out ten centimeters from scaled fingers, piercing deeply into the wood of the table. He watched as Dian Mu sat there, calm and unruffled, sipped her tea as a monster unveiled itself across from her on the deck of the houseboat.
And he watched, gratefully, as Zau subsided, face shrank, fangs turned back into teeth, claws turned back into merely long fingernails. Watched as Zau wiped his face with a napkin, once again a comic book villain. Watched as Zau stood, performed a deep kau tau to Dian Mu, took the iPad and walked out.
And, of course, he watched as Dian Mu stood, sheer sheathe showing her perfect body, watched as she looked into his eye again through the magnification of the scope, watched as she frowned slightly at him. And then her face was lost, the scope instead showing a single frame from a CCTV, he and Joyla entwined on the matts of a dojo, her body twisted into an impossible knot, on his face an expression of pain or ecstasy or both.
He glanced at his phone, now another expensive glass and aluminum brick, sighed, rolled over and watched her through the binoculars as she reversed her quick roll along the paths back to Huangsha Avenue and the car that appeared as if from nowhere to receive her then disappear again.
Now at least he had a better idea of what the hell had just happened. And a new worry to add to his list.
