Jackal (16 page)

A very large, very ancient man emerged from a small stone shed. He was broad-shouldered and barrel-chested, and he stood straight as an oak. However, his skin sagged in every direction, and he had massive liver spots all over his bald head. He wore an orange monk’s robe and managed to look both menacing and kind at the same time. He bowed to me.

I bowed back. Bowing was cool.

“I have brought a friend,” Hú Dié said. “I believe you may have heard of him. His name is Jake. He is the one who got Phoenix interested in mountain bikes.”

“Greetings, Jake,” he said. “I am Grandmaster Long. Welcome to Cangzhen Temple.”

“A pleasure to make your acquaintance, sir.” I bowed again, this time as low as I possibly could. I remembered reading one time that this was the ultimate show of respect to elders.

Hú Dié giggled. “No need to be so formal, Jake. It would be a shame for you to put your back out bowing so low.”

I frowned and straightened up.

Grandmaster Long smiled. “I see nothing wrong with the gesture, Hú Dié. In fact, I appreciate it, Jake. It has been too long since someone afforded me the respect I feel I deserve.”

“No problem, sir,” I said.

“Why are you here?”

“Um …,” I said.

“Jake is in town for a bike race, and I needed to get out of the house, so we decided to go on a little joyride. Isn’t that right, Jake?”

“Yeah, that’s right.” I looked at Grandmaster Long. “This is a very … interesting place. How long have you lived here?”

“Longer than you can imagine, but it seems that time has come to an end. I once had the foolish notion that I could rebuild this special place. Alas, I have decided to give up. I have rented an apartment next door to my old friend, PawPaw, in Beijing. I will be moving very soon.”

Hú Dié looked like she was going to cry. “No! You can’t do that. It wouldn’t be right.”

“Everything has its time,” Grandmaster Long said.
“This is true for people as well as places. Some things have changed in my world, and I have new priorities. I am very glad you have come, though. I still have something that belongs to you inside the weapons shed.”

“Trixie!” Hú Dié cried, and she climbed off the motorcycle. She ran into the shed from which Grandmaster Long had just appeared, and a moment later she came out pushing the craziest-looking pink mountain bike I’d ever seen. Where there were usually shocks, the bike had rigid frame welds. Where there were usually welds, the bike had shocks. Strangest of all, the bike had no seat or seat post.

Hú Dié beamed. “Jake, meet Trixie, my custom mountain bike. What do you think?”

“I think she’s totally whacked,” I replied. “By that I mean both you
and
your bike. Nobody names their ride.”

“Sure they do,” she said. “I—”

Hú Dié stopped suddenly and cocked her head to one side as if listening. I heard the whine of an engine.

“Oh, no!” Hú Dié said. “Not again!

“What?” I asked.

“Lin Tan—”

Grandmaster Long laughed and laid a hand on Hú Dié’s arm. “No, Hú Dié. Relax. It’s not Lin Tan.”

“Are you sure?” she asked.

“Positive,” he replied.

“Who is it, then?”

“It is PawPaw,” Grandmaster Long said. “She is coming to get me. I’ve been rather weak the past few days, and she planned to rent some sort of all-terrain vehicle so that I won’t have to make the long walk all the way to the Tea Village
before hiring a taxi. I wasn’t expecting her for another day or two, but perhaps the vehicle was unavailable then.”

“But you didn’t say why it is that you’re positive it isn’t Lin Tan,” Hú Dié said.

“Lin Tan is dead,” Grandmaster Long replied. “I thought you would have heard this by now.”

I felt my eyes widen, and Hú Dié pulled her arm from beneath Grandmaster Long’s hand.

“He’s still
alive
!” I said. “Lin Tan attacked me in Shanghai yesterday, and now he’s following me!”

“Lin Tan is alive?” Grandmaster Long asked, still not believing me.

A small dune buggy suddenly zipped through the gap in the wall, and there wasn’t an old woman behind the wheel.

It was Lin Tan.

Hú Dié dropped Trixie and raced into the weapons shed, followed closely by Grandmaster Long. I didn’t know the first thing about kung fu weapons, so I ran over to Trixie and climbed onto the crazy mountain bike as Lin Tan veered toward me.

Trixie’s pedals were clipless, which meant that you needed clips on the bottoms of your shoes to clip into them. I wasn’t wearing mountain biking shoes, so I couldn’t clip in, but Trixie’s pedals were egg-beater style and fairly wide, so at least I could get a little purchase. I sped away as best I could just as Lin Tan ran over the very spot where Trixie and I had been half a second earlier.

Hú Dié howled like a banshee and came running out of the shed with a wide three-foot-long sword attached to the
end of a six-foot staff. Grandmaster Long came out carrying one, too. I knew that the weapon was called a
kwan dao
, but only because of
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles
.

Hú Dié howled again, and Lin Tan spun his vehicle around. He wasn’t wearing a helmet, and I saw that he was as bald as Grandmaster Long, except his scalp was as black and scaly as his face. He sped toward Hú Dié—and as he was about to plow into her, she leaped high into the air, swinging the
kwan dao
’s blade straight down.

Hú Dié cleared the steel roll cage that crisscrossed the top of the dune buggy, and the blade headed straight for Lin Tan’s bald black head. Unfortunately, the blade nicked one of the roll cage’s crossbars, and the weapon bounced straight back up at Hú Dié.

She released it in midair, and both she and the
kwan dao
went down hard on the courtyard’s paving stones.

Lin Tan cut his steering wheel and headed toward Grandmaster Long. The old man sidestepped the dune buggy like a matador avoiding a charging bull and stabbed his massive blade into the opening where there would normally be a driver’s side door.

However, the dune buggy was traveling too fast. The blade clanged off the door frame before it could connect with Lin Tan, and the weapon was wrenched from Grandmaster Long’s hands.

Lin Tan turned his vehicle back toward Hú Dié.

She was on her knees, attempting to stand. Her fall had really knocked her for a loop. There was no way she was going to be able to jump over the dune buggy again. I aimed Trixie for a head-on collision with Lin Tan and pedaled the
bizarre seatless mountain bike with all my might. I swerved in front of Hú Dié and shouted,
“Move!”

Hú Dié leaped sideways while I continued straight toward Lin Tan. I saw him smirk, and when I was certain a collision was inevitable, I bunny-hopped with all my strength while laying the bike sideways in a tabletop maneuver.

I kicked the bike away from me while twisting to one side, sending Trixie spinning toward the windshieldless dune buggy. The force of my kick spun me around the side of the vehicle, and I managed to avoid contact with the buggy altogether.

Lin Tan wasn’t so lucky with Trixie. As I hit the ground, I saw one end of the mountain bike’s sturdy handlebars sink deep into his right temple.

The dune buggy suddenly lost speed and slowly rolled to a stop. Lin Tan’s dead foot must have slipped off of the gas pedal.

Hú Dié was standing now, and she wobbled over to me as Grandmaster Long ran over to Lin Tan with his enormous
kwan dao
back in his hands. The old man tossed Trixie aside and turned off the dune buggy’s engine. He unfastened the seat belt and dragged Lin Tan’s limp body out of the vehicle.

“Is he—?” Hú Dié asked.

Grandmaster Long nodded. “Yes. He won’t be bothering you or anyone else ever again. Well done, Jake.”

I turned away and puked twenty soup dumplings all over the courtyard.

A few minutes later, Hú Dié rested a hand on my back and said, “I am so proud of you, Jake. You saved my life.”

“I believe you saved both our lives,” Grandmaster Long said. “I’m not the man I used to be. I don’t think I could have stopped Lin Tan. You both saw me try, and fail.”

I shook my head. “Stop it, you two. Let me puke in peace.”

Grandmaster Long laughed. “Your reaction shows that you do not condone violence. That is an admirable trait, Jake. Let me bring you something to drink. Perhaps a—”

A cell phone suddenly rang, and Hú Dié jumped. She hurriedly unzipped one of the pockets in her leather riding jacket and pulled out her phone. She looked at the screen, and her face went pale.

“Who is it?” I asked.

“It’s my mother’s number, but she can no longer speak. She has lost control of her vocal cords.”

“Answer it,” Grandmaster Long said. “It may be PawPaw.”

Hú Dié answered the phone. “
Wai?”

She said nothing for a few seconds, then she seemed to relax. “Okay,” she said, “see you soon.” And she handed the phone to Grandmaster Long. “It is PawPaw. She is calling for you.”

Grandmaster Long didn’t look surprised. He spoke with PawPaw in Chinese for what seemed like forever before hanging up the phone and handing it back to Hú Dié.

“I guess I had better get back to my mother’s nursing home.”

Grandmaster Long nodded. “I am going, too.” He jerked his chin toward Lin Tan’s dune buggy. “I will drive that. Jake can ride with me. You can ride the motorcycle.”

“Is anybody planning on telling me what’s going on?” I asked.

“PawPaw is heading to the Kaifeng airport to pick up Hok,” Grandmaster Long said, “along with a few other visitors. We will meet them at the nursing home.”

“Hok is
here
?”

“That is what I just said.”

“Sorry, Jake,” Hú Dié said. “I should have mentioned her coming earlier when I told you about PawPaw. Hok is supposed to bring additional herbs to add to the ones PawPaw has been giving my mother.”

“PawPaw is
treating
your mother?” I asked, clutching my backpack. “I thought she was just evaluating her or something. What about the … you know?”

“Dragon bone?” Grandmaster Long asked.

My eyes widened.

“Don’t be so shocked,” Grandmaster Long said. “Phoenix realized yesterday what you’d done. He’d already told his grandfather, Hok, PawPaw, and me about the extra dragon bone that he hid. Even if Phoenix hadn’t said a word, I would have guessed that your sudden appearance here has something to do with dragon bone. Why else would you be here? More than that, why else would Lin Tan have followed you? My guess is that you have Phoenix’s dragon bone in your bag.”

My grip loosened on my backpack. “So much for me being a sneaky jackal. Phoenix is going to hate me forever.”

“You might be surprised,” Grandmaster Long said. “You simply did what he planned to do anyway. In fact, he feels quite bad for not having acted sooner.”

Hú Dié gasped. “You mean Phoenix decided to give me some dragon bone for my mother, after all?”

Grandmaster Long nodded. “Except, by the time he had convinced his grandfather to drive him to the trail to retrieve it, the police had arrived at their home to question both Phoenix and Ryan about the accidental mountain biking death of a Chinese gangster from California at the very same state park.”

“DaXing,” I said.

“Yes,” Grandmaster Long said. “Phoenix had a hunch that you may have been involved, but he said nothing to the police.”

I felt my cheeks begin to blush. “Guilty as charged,” I said. “Hú Dié told me how I could find Phoenix’s stash. I took a limo to the state park the same day she left. DaXing must have followed me. He attacked me after I found the dragon bone, and I took off on my bike. He fell into a ravine when he was chasing me. His death really was an accident.”

“Regardless,” Grandmaster Long said, “I have to say, I am glad that it was you who took it and not someone who might have used the substance for questionable purposes, especially with DaXing being there. Once the police were satisfied that Phoenix and Ryan had in no way been harboring DaXing, nor were they responsible for his death, they said that the boys were free to travel here. So they did.”

“Phoenix and Ryan are in China now, too?” I asked. “In Shanghai?”

Grandmaster Long shook his head. “Mr. Chang could not arrange a flight to Shanghai on such short notice for Phoenix, his grandfather, Ryan, and Ryan’s mother. So the four of them flew to Beijing, and then on to Kaifeng. Their
plane just landed. Hok was on the same flight from Beijing to Kaifeng. They are the others that I had mentioned were traveling with Hok.”

“Mr. Chang arranged their flights?” Hú Dié asked.

“All of the flights except for Hok’s. He knows nothing about her. Mr. Chang agreed to pay the others’ way to Kaifeng because they can take the midnight bullet train from there to Shanghai. There weren’t enough airplane or train seats available to get them from Beijing directly to Shanghai in time for the big race tomorrow morning.”

“Mr. Chang still wants us to race?” I asked.

Grandmaster Long nodded. “He has been in constant contact with Ryan’s mother and Phoenix’s grandfather. He has been worried about you, Jake. PawPaw just told me that she will get word to Mr. Chang through Ryan’s mother about you having surfaced here at Cangzhen Temple. Ryan’s mother will contact your parents, too. Once everyone has been informed that you are fine, I am certain they will all be eager to see you and Hú Dié race alongside Phoenix and Ryan tomorrow.”

“I’m sorry,” I said. “I didn’t mean to make so many people worry.”

“All’s well that ends well,” Grandmaster Long said.

I hefted my backpack. “I can’t believe I’ve done all this for nothing.”

“On the contrary,” Grandmaster Long said. “Your drastic actions were the catalyst for something much bigger.”

“Huh?”

Grandmaster Long smirked. “You will learn more when we arrive in Kaifeng.”