Scary Dead Things - 02 (11 page)

“Care to introduce me to your friends, James?” I asked. He raised an eyebrow at that. “I abolished that rule months ago,” I explained. “I didn't think you went by
Ozymandias
anywhere else.”

“Oh, yes. I heard you had overthrown Night Razor. Congratulations on that, by the way. Oh well, I suppose you're right. James it is. However, I hope you don't mind if I keep calling you Dr. Death. I know it's hokey, but after a while I found myself growing used to it.”

“Knock yourself out.”

“Excellent,” he said, and then turned to his companions. “May I introduce you to Nergui, Bang, and Cheng-gong.” I tried not to smirk at that second one. I bet he was a real hit with the ladies.

The one called Nergui turned to me and bowed. “It is an honor to meet you, Freewill Dr. Death.”

“Thanks! Nice to meet you, too,” I answered.

James then said, “Nergui is the only one who speaks any English. So I'm afraid you won't get much conversation out of the other two. Unless, that is, your Mandarin is up to snuff.”

“I'm lucky to speak English,” I replied, nodding in the direction of the other two.

“Well, why don't you wait here for a bit, and we'll see what we can do for lodgings for the night,” said James.

“Sounds good as long as you can point me towards the nearest bathroom first.”

* * *

James gave me instructions to wait where I was, and then left with the two non-English speakers, leaving me with Nergui. He said it was in case I had any questions, but I had the feeling it was to keep an eye on me and make sure I didn't wander off. He needn't have worried too much. I wasn't quite up for any major exploring. Being a native of New Jersey and a current resident of Brooklyn, anything below the rating of suburban was more or less alien to me. I had no intention of walking around the wrong tree and winding up hopelessly lost.

In the meantime, I slowly made the circuit of the tent and tried to engage Nergui in small talk.

“So...how long have you been here?” I asked. Yeah, it was lame, but sue me. It's not often I find myself stuck in a tent in deepest darkest China, talking to what I presumed was a Mongolian vampire.

“It has been my honor to serve the Khan for these past three and a half centuries,” he replied in a neutral voice. OK, so I was dealing with another heavy hitter here. If James wanted me to stay put, there was no way I was getting away from this guy.

“That's Ogedai Khan, right?” I asked.

“We do not address him by his proper name here. He is simply the Khan,” Nergui said with that same tone. I wasn't getting much of a read off this guy. Hopefully, I wasn't going to say anything to insult him. I'd hate for my first outdoor view of China to be of myself getting bashed against a rock.

“Sorry. Not trying to be insulting. I’m just curious,” I said, trying to covering my ass. Nergui simply nodded at that. “Is he really the son of Genghis Khan?”

“Indeed. The Khan is the chosen son of the great Temüjin. He keeps his spirit of conquest alive in our hearts, if perhaps not in our actions.”

“That is so freaking cool!”

“Explain this ‘freaking cool’ you speak,” he said, again without a trace of emotion. Damn, this guy could teach Ed a thing or two. He was stone cold. Of course, maybe I shouldn't jump to conclusions. It could just be that I was a stranger and he was speaking in a non-native language.

“It's a phrase from my country. It means it's really great to know, I guess. I mean, it's not every day you get to talk about a person straight out of the history books in the present tense.” Yeah, I was rambling.

Nergui again just nodded. “You are young, Freewill. In time, these things will become common for you.”

“I guess it’s safe to assume you know all about this whole freewill thing.”

“Many do,” he said. “It has been a long time since one such as you has been seen. Our seers have spent much time trying to divine what it means.”

“I don't think too much of it,” I said dismissively. “I think it was just luck of the draw. I got turned, and it just happened to be a coincidence.”

“No such thing,” he said with an air of finality. I decided not to argue with him for obvious reasons. Time to change the topic of discussion.

“So, Nergui, right? What do you do for the Khan?”

“I am one of his assassins.” Nope, forget what I said earlier about jumping to conclusions. This guy was hardcore.

“So that must be an...interesting job.”

“It is what I am.” Gah! This small talk thing was quickly fizzling out. Maybe time to do some minor wandering after all. At the rate this conversation was going, we were going to just wind up glaring at each other in silence. All things considered, I figured that was one of Nergui's specialties; however, it most certainly wasn't one of mine.

I walked over to the opening of the tent. “Is it OK if I step outside?” Figured it was safer to ask than to just try it and wind up with this guy tackling me and putting me into a chokehold.

Nergui again nodded. Damn, that was getting maddening. Not quite on the same level as Sally's eye rolls, mind you, but annoying nevertheless.

I stepped outside of the tent. I could hear quiet shuffling behind me that said Nergui had followed. No doubt about it, James had him keeping an eye on me. The question was why?

Ah, screw it! Enough with the paranoia. This was the first real foreign country I had stepped into in a long time. Time to get a look at the place. Interestingly enough, the first thing that caught my attention was the sky. I had never seen the stars or the moon so crisp and bright. Hell, in Brooklyn you were lucky you could see the sky at all on some nights. The sight was pretty breathtaking. So this was what it was like to live in a place that wasn't constantly lit up by halogen lamps and neon. This was something you wanted to share with someone special. Bad thought, as my mind immediately went back to
her
. Grrrr! Even thousands of miles away, my inability to ask a single simple question to her haunted me. OK, that was enough of the sky. It was depressing me now.

The area immediately around me was populated with more round tents similar to the one I had emerged from. I'm sure I learned their name somewhere in either history class or on the Travel Channel, but for the life of me couldn't remember what they were called. All I remembered was that they were apparently a popular Bedouin type of dwelling. Wherever I was, this was neither a large nor a permanent settlement.

I took a few more steps to get a better look. The area we were in was somewhat reminiscent of the time I had gone out to Vegas, or more specifically, the parts of the Mojave I had seen. The immediate vicinity was sparse but broken up by the occasional vegetation. To one side (
East, West, or whatever...I didn't have a compass on me
) the desert stretched as far as the eye could see. Normally in the dark, this wouldn't be very far at all; however, darkness isn't an issue for vampires. With the exception that all of the colors were heavily desaturated, I could see every bit as well as if it were broad daylight.

On the far side of the village, if you could call it that, were several large rocky outcroppings that led up to some more hilly terrain. I started wandering over to them. The whole thing was pretty damn cool now that I thought about it. Here I was in some nomadic village out in the middle of nowhere. It was like I had stepped out of my life and into the middle of an
Indiana Jones
movie...and not that lousy crystal skull one either.

I was so caught up in the fantasy of it all that I hadn't noticed that I wandered outside the edge of the settlement. I was standing close to one of the large rock formations, thinking about maybe being adventurous and attempting to scale it, when I heard a *thud* noise to my left.

I took a look around. Considering how barren the terrain was, it wasn't too hard to find what I thought to be the source. There was a large rock nearly the size of my head lying in the dirt no more than ten feet away from me. Maybe it rolled down from one of the larger boulders. Although, if that had happened, I probably would have heard it. The way this had sounded was if it had just dropped from the sky. Oh well. I'm sure these things were common out here. It’d take a little more than some loose rocks to scare off this city boy. I mean it's not like...*thud*

What the? I turned back, and there was another rock, similar in size to the first, on the ground where I had just been standing a few moments ago. If that thing had hit me, it could have shattered my skull like a chicken egg. One fallen rock was something, but two was getting a bit odd. I turned my eyes up towards the nearby hills and took a look around, scanning the area. Nope, nothing out of the...what the? I could have sworn I had seen movement out of the corner of my eye, like something dark had just ducked out of sight.

OK, I was probably just creeping myself out. It was time to get a grip and relax...and of course, that was when something grabbed my arm.

* * *

Let's face facts: you knew it was Nergui all along, didn't you? Well, I didn't. So I shrieked like a little girl when I felt his big, meaty fist fall onto my shoulder. The cry was cut short, however, as his other hand quickly came around and covered my mouth.

“It is not safe out here. Return with me,” he said into my ear.

I tried to save whatever grace I had left, which wasn't much. I pulled out of his grip and hissed, “Jeez, dude! Did you have to sneak up on me?”

“I did not sneak. If you did not notice, then perhaps the fault lies with you,” he said, and then turned back towards the ring of tents.

Grrrr! Damn him and his ninja logic!

I caught up to him, lest I stand there acting all pissy and wind up getting my brains bashed in by another of the magical raining rocks of Mongolia. “So why isn't it safe?” I asked.

“Because it is not.” (
Oh Jesus Christ!
)

“Care to elaborate?”

“You are in the Wanderer's charge. If he wishes for you to know more, then he shall be the one to tell you.”

“The wanderer?”

“The one you call James.”

“Oh. Dude has a lot of names.”

“Indeed he does,” Nergui agreed.

“So where did the Wanderer wander off to?”

“The Khan is close by. He is the Wanderer's sire. Since your arrival was not expected, he is surely telling his sire of the news.”

“OK. I guess that makes sense,” I responded. I knew that there was some shit going down here. That was why James had been called away to begin with. It made sense that whenever anything happened outside of the norm, like say a packing crate full of yours truly showing up on the doorstep, that the guy in charge would need to be notified. “So is the Khan here?”

“The Khan would not dirty his steps in an unworthy place such as this.”

“Oh, of course not,” I replied, hoping my sarcasm didn't cross the gulf between our cultures. I got the feeling that insulting the Khan around these guys would fly about as well as pissing on a picture of Queen Elizabeth in front of the guards outside of Buckingham Palace...maybe even less so considering that most vampires I had met seemed to think that violence was a dandy solution to almost all of life’s problems.