Another One Bites the Dust (11 page)

Vayl nodded. “It looks that way. But he has not lived this long through carelessness.” He thought awhile. “We will wait,” he decided. “Let him believe his current security measures suffice.”

“They probably will,” said Bergman, managing to sound depressed and proud at the same time. “As soon as the armor detects danger, the hood will automatically cover his head. This vamp is not going to die by conventional weaponry.”

“He’s got to have some vulnerability,” I said, getting the urge to throw something. Like Bergman. “You do want to get your invention back, don’t you?” I asked him.

“Of course!”

“Then you’re going to have to find a way to beat it!”

Bergman tapped a few keys and said, “Do you think there’s any way I can get a piece of it? I could do some tests.”

“Why can’t you just make some more and test that?” asked Cole.

“Because it physically changes once it’s been put on according to who, or what, is wearing it. We had that, at least, figured out before it was stolen.”

“How much do you need?” I asked.

“A fingernail. A scale—”

I looked at Cassandra. “We’re the ones most likely to get close to him. Do you think, between the two of us . . . ?”

She suddenly had a hard time meeting my eyes. “Maybe. I would like to consult the cards first.”

Bergman snorted. “Like
that’ll
help.”

I grabbed a pillow and winged it at his head.

“Hey! What was that for?”

“Just jogging your brain out of asshole mode.”

“Something is happening,” Vayl said, the urgency in his voice calling everyone’s attention back to the plasma screen.

At first we could only see quick movements at the limits of the cameras’ range. Then the woman with the criminal singing voice screamed. A group of maybe ten masked intruders raced into view, still dripping from their recent swim. They headed straight toward Lung, accompanied by several men and a couple of women from the crowd. The rest of the guests scattered, clearing out so fast you’d have thought they participated in duck-the-violence drills on a regular basis. Only Shunyuan Fa and the singer remained.

The singer grabbed a passing guest and ripped his throat out with her delicate little fangs before moving deeper into the fray.

Shunyuan Fa struck a straggler of the attackers, jerking the man’s head sideways and burying his fangs in his jugular. The man died flailing, his last word an anguished gurgle.

The man’s companion was better prepared. He pulled a short, straight sword and cut off Shunyuan Fa’s head as he leaned over his victim’s body. Vayl and I shared a silent moment of dejection as our best clue to the Raptor’s location went up in smoke. Then we turned our attention back to the screen. We still had Lung, and our original connection to Samos was faring quite a bit better.

Lung’s headgear had activated instantly, moving up from his neck so fast it was a blur. Later, when Bergman slowed the footage down, we witnessed how the scales erupted from his skin like immense golden blisters, growing up and outward at his eyebrows and mouth, so by the time the scales stopped moving two pairs of barbed horns jutted from his forehead and his long, square snout bristled with fangs.

Lung shed his robe in a single, quick motion. Scales covered his entire body, flashing gold and red as he moved, which brought my attention to his legs. He hadn’t been sitting on his knees after all. They seemed to have become fused in a permanently bent position. He’d actually been crouching on his feet, which had grown at least another twelve inches. His toes had lengthened to the point that he could walk on them like an ostrich. It looked awkward, but he moved just as fast as his would-be killers.

The first wave was almost on him when he stopped it with a single burst of blue flame that caught two of the attackers in the face. It burned so fast and hot that seconds later nothing remained of their skulls but smoking craters. Despite the fact that their clothes were soaking wet, the three men standing nearest those unfortunates also caught fire. They immediately stripped off their jackets and threw them overboard.

“Remarkable,” Vayl murmured.

Watching through clenched fingers, Bergman muttered angrily, “Just wait.”

Lung dropped off his perch, held his hands in the air, and flexed. The wrapping material shredded as they swelled to twice their bandaged size. In fact,
he
was growing, filling out in height and breadth until he at least doubled the size of his largest attacker. My gaze went back to his hands. As Bergman had described earlier, they were gnarled claws now, massive weapons tipped with poison that he used with deadly efficiency, raking deep furrows in faces, necks, and chests. He left his victims writhing on the ground as he met the next wave.

This group carried a variety of machine guns—Uzis, MAC-10s, MP40s, likely bought out of the back of some thug’s van—which they trained on Lung’s face. Made sense to me. The eyes, nostrils, mouth, any one of them should admit a round, especially one traveling nearly three hundred feet per second. But, as Bergman had said, the armor deflected the ammunition, closing over the vulnerable areas with lightning speed. And while the assassins concentrated on Lung’s head, his tail swept into action.

He’d kept it tucked behind him all this time. Now it whipped through the gunmen like a snapped guy wire, leaving a wake of severed and broken bones.

“That’s new,” said Bergman. His hands were in his hair now, pulling it in two directions, just like his heart. The scientist in him was fascinated. The creator in him had never been so violated.

Lung’s cohort had kicked ass too, though she much preferred the hand-to-hand method highlighted by the occasional terminal bite. I watched her work with grudging admiration. She spun to deliver a head kick and her opponent chose the same block and counter I would have used. Neither worked.

“Look at that speed,” I murmured, my eyes unable to keep her movement from blurring as the man went down, leaving his neck open to her final attack. I felt a sudden need to work out old-school, accompanied by some stirring music from, say,
Rocky IV
. Just in case she and I squared off, I did not want to find myself flat on my butt with the heel of her foot as my last living visual.

Within three minutes it was over. Lung and his partner stood triumphant in a spreading pool of blood while the chicken-shit party guests slowly made their way back to the deck. For the first time, Lung spoke. Holding out his massive arms he challenged the crowd. In Chinese.

“What’s he saying?” I asked Cole.

He’d sat absolutely still through the action, a toddler at his first pay-for-your-ticket movie. Had he done any better than a three-year-old at connecting the pictures on the screen with actual reality? I studied him. Relaxed face and shoulders, hands crossed quietly on his lap. But his heel jumped up and down like it needed to telegraph a battleship, and his hand inched toward the bowl on the table where he’d dumped his bubble gum. Somewhat relieved to see our rookie wasn’t as green as the bowl, I waited to hear his translation.

“See me. Hear me. I. Am. DRAGON!” Lung looked slowly around the crowd. “You have witnessed my enemies. Though they try to destroy me, they are powerless against my strength. I
will
be your next emperor!” Nobody said a word. One by one, they began to bow.

CHAPTERTWELVE

We sat in the RV, watching Lung’s cocktail bash become a mop-up. Nobody felt like talking. Not on the yacht. Not in our bus.

Cassandra sat hugging her knees, her luxuriant braids hiding her face.

Cole slumped beside me, warming up a new piece of Dubble Bubble, looking away from the TV every few seconds to check on the rest of us.

I couldn’t read Vayl, but if I had to guess, I’d say he looked the way you’d expect a Roman warrior to appear right before being impaled by an enemy lance.

And there was Bergman, immersed in the technology, calling out the names of the guests as the software matched their pictures.

“General Sang Lee and wife.”

“General Ton Sun and wife.”

“General Wing Don.”

Clearly Lung had designs on the People’s Liberation Army. No doubt he’d convinced the surviving generals to ally with him. And if he could figure out how to replicate the armor, his military, already the largest in the world, would be unstoppable.

It felt like someone had sucked all the hope from the room along with most of the air.

“This whole deal pisses me off,” I said. Rising from the couch took effort, made me realize the battle had already begun. Our foe had made the first sortie. And dragon fear was no myth. But now that I’d hit my feet, I felt better.

Cassandra swept her hair back from her face. Nodding at her I went on. “This guy is nothing but a duded-up version of Tammy Shobeson.”

Cole straightened and turned to listen.

“Who is Tammy Shobeson?” Vayl asked.

“My childhood nemesis. If God is just, she is now a fat, pimply divorcée with a chronic yeast infection.” I even had Bergman’s attention now. This had been our first point of commonality as college students. His bully had been a redheaded jerk named Clell Danburton, and I thought sometimes he still had nightmares about their showdowns.

“So what’s your point?” he asked, sounding less like a robot and more like my old jogging partner.

I looked him in the eye. “Bottom line, Lung is just a spoiled brat who gets his way by scaring people. He may have found an effective way to do that, but it is not assassin-proof. We”—my gesture took in everybody in the room—“are being paid to kick this bully’s ass. And that’s exactly what we’re going to do.”

Almost dawn in the Body of Christ. As gross as that sounds, Corpus Christi glowed like a promise from our vantage point on Bay Trail. The breeze felt great, invigorating. Or maybe it was the renewed hope that our plans could work, that we might all make it to the other side of this mission without being roasted alive by Iron Chef Lung.

The five of us watched the lights of the
Constance Malloy
wink out one by one. We’d emerged from the RV by silent agreement. Even Bergman stepped out for a breath of fresh air, as if the massacre we’d watched had somehow poisoned the RV’s ventilation system. He didn’t stay long.

“Gotta get some sleep if I’m going to come up with anything workable in the morning,” he said. By “anything workable” he meant a new invention. One that, after several hours of brainstorming, we agreed could actually destroy Lung if we could get him to ingest it.

“Okay, that puts me at the monitors,” said Cole. He’d stay up while the rest of us slept. And if I dreamed again, my safety would be his responsibility. Maybe Cole could tell how much the whole deal bothered me, because he patted me on the shoulder and grinned. “Don’t worry, Jaz. If you try anything funny I’ll wrestle you to the ground and tickle you until you pee yourself.”

“Oh great, that gives me something to look forward to,” I drawled. “Killer nightmares
and
incontinence. Thanks a lot.”

He spread his arms and gave me a disarming grin. “I am here but to serve.” With a parting chuckle he followed Bergman back into the RV.

Cassandra remained with us, arms crossed over her chest, staring into the dark water.

“You are troubled,” Vayl said.

She didn’t roll her eyes at him, but it struck me as a close thing. “Naturally.”

“A vision?” he asked hopefully.

She shook her head. “Nothing that specific. Just a feeling.” She stood a little straighter, and you could almost see her slamming all the doors and windows. “Never mind,” she said.

“But—”

“Believe me, Vayl, if I knew anything that would help, I’d tell you.” She stared at him. I got the feeling she was talking about two things at once. She left at a regal, controlled pace although I suspected she would’ve enjoyed it more if she could’ve stomped on his foot and run off, cackling madly as she receded into the Texas dawn.