The Prospects (Short Story): Above the Stars (5 page)

“Killing Chak is stupid. He’s teamed up with almost every hero at some point. They’ll come after you.”

“They not know. We make last sale, be richest men in China.” The long-haired man scanned the horizon. “No one come. No one follow. We kill you so you not talk.”

He yelled in Cantonese. The sailors nodded. Four of them picked up the bound Chak and lifted him.

“Don’t do this,” said Alex.

“You, no tell me what do,” said the long-haired man.

The boat came to a jarring stop. The shock made everyone lurch. The four men holding Chak dropped him.

The long-haired man yelled something in Cantonese. He put the gun to Alex’s head. “This friend of yours? He come close, you die.”

One sailor looked over the bow. He froze. His skin turned as white as the clouds overhead. Through shivering lips he whispered, “
Hen da long
.”

The long-haired man raised Alex’s gun and drew the curved knife with his other hand.

The boat pitched forward. Alex’s shoeless feet slipped against the deck. The sailors grabbed the railings and everything they could to keep from falling. Chak rolled towards the front. The long-haired man braced his footing and lifted the knife.

Four curved claws, each the size of a sword, came over the deck. Four more appeared on the other side.

The long-haired man went stiff with fear. He dropped the curved dagger, which landed point-first and stuck out of the metal deck. A burst of wind knocked Chak’s hat off his head.

Alex looked to the stern. Rising from the ocean was a dark-blue head with a wide snout above long fangs. Two long tendrils dangled from its upper lip. The scales of its serpentine neck glistened and sparkled like stars against a cloudless night.

But what Alex really noticed were its eyes. They shone like two stars against a field of black.

The boat righted itself as Qing Long rose over the water and released a roar deeper than thunder. It was loud enough to drown out the bangs when the long-haired man shot every bullet from the pistol before dropping it on the deck.

Several sailors jumped overboard before a clawed hand caught the long-haired man. The other cut a jumping sailor into pieces as it fell onto the deck and tore it open. The stench of blood and fire poured from the long open gashes.

Qing Long threw its head back. Instead of a roar, it emitted a mournful cry. Its claws slashed through the remaining sailors.

Chak lay prone and let the claws pass harmlessly over him.

Alex stared into Qing Long’s eyes. The dragon lowered its arm. When it got closer Alex saw a deep cut in its shoulder, the same one he struck with the curved knife.

Qing Long lowered its head. Its giant nostrils twitched. Its breath smelled like a warm and dry spring night. The fangs in its lower jaws were longer than Alex’s shins and were close to Alex’s shoeless feet.

Alex’s training taught him to handle such a threat as a force of nature and think only of survival. But here, with his hands cuffed to the rail, he couldn’t escape and he couldn’t fight. He was at the dragon’s mercy. It could tear him in half with a single bite.

And, somehow, he knew it wouldn’t.

In a single motion Qing Long shot into the sky. Its snake-like body stretched from the water to the clouds. The boat rocked furiously when it released its grip. Chak rolled through a gash in the deck.

It took a long time for the boat to stop rocking. The cloudy skies overhead turned gold as the sun set behind them before Alex dared to move.

He stretched his foot towards the curved knife. He caught the handle with his toes. He brought it back towards himself carefully and got his hands close enough to his feet to grab it. The blade sliced through the handcuffs’ chain with no effort.

He looked around the deck. There was no one left alive. The sailors who jumped over the side weren’t clinging to the boat.

Chak’s voice came through the gash in the deck. “Agent, you up there? Help me out. They tied me up real good.”

Alex opened the door to a narrow and steep stairway. He flipped the light switch, but nothing happened. He took out his LED keychain flashlight and shone it on the steps ahead of him.

At the foot of the stairs he turned the light up. Inches from his face were two rows of interlocking dagger-like teeth.

Alex jumped back so fast he tripped over the bottom stairs and dropped the flashlight.

“Get up,” said Chak. “It ain’t moving.”

Alex picked up the flashlight. There was no skin or muscle left on the suspended skull, but something glittered in the darkness behind it.

Slowly, Alex let the light’s beam go along the jawline to the neck, which was draped with a pelt of glistening scales identical to what he saw at the Vietnamese smugglers’ hideout. Further down he saw a bony arm sticking out with the last joints of the fingers clearly broken.

Alex took his curved knife and put it against the missing joint. The handle kept it from being a perfect fit, but the size was so proportionately correct he had no doubt the blade was once this thing’s claw.

Alex shone the light around. Tied to a shelf against the wall was a jar with a large reptilian eye in it. A table under it had various entrails and glands pinned down under a nonfunctioning sunlamp. At the corner was a sectioned tray. Each little box on the tray held a dark glistening cube.

“Over here,” said Chak.

Too engrossed to listen, Alex followed the process of making Macguffin backwards. He saw the open over at the end of a row of vials and beakers, all attached to the metal table with magnets. On the other end, he saw a barrel placed beneath a desiccated reptilian tail as long as he was tall. Inside the barrel was a thick dark syrupy liquid that reeked of sulfur and iron.

Under the direct light Alex saw how deep red it was. “Blood,” he said under his breath. “They made a drug from dragon blood.”

Over the barrel were several deep gashes in the metal hull. It took Alex a second to remember he made those himself. He remembered how Chak said Qing Long tracked by scent, but the long-haired man boasted Qing Long couldn’t find them. When Alex made those holes, he unwittingly summoned Qing Long.

“Ain’t getting younger,” said Chak.

Alex ran to his side and ran the knife through the ropes and cables that bound him. They came apart with no effort. He helped Chak to his feet.

Chak looked at the skeleton in the faded light that came from the gashes in the deck. “Must be hard to see your own flesh-and-blood slaughtered, eh?”

“Poachers hunt so many animals,” said Alex, “it’s good to see one of them hunt back.”

“I don’t hear the engines running.” Chak looked up through the gash. “You got a plan for getting home?”

Alex took his cell phone out of his pocket and tapped the signal icon. “Full bars.”

Alex and Chak stood on the tugboat that led the damaged fishing boat back to the harbor. They watched the night skyline of Seattle slowly come towards them.

Chak said, “This city changed a lot since the first time I saw it.”

“How long ago was that?”

“Back when what’s now Pioneer Square was the muddy village of Duwaps. I’ve come and gone a lot of times, but I spent most of the sixties here. That’s when I met Midori, a real pretty
nisei
.”

“A what?”

“American-born Japanese. Poor girl spent her childhood in an internment camp out in the desert. When World War Two ended, she wanted to get far from that. She ended up here in Seattle. I remember the first time I saw her. Bright sunny day, her in a gauzy dress that showed her shape with the wind blowing her long hair back with the waves behind her. Let me tell ya, girls these days show more skin, but back then ladies had sensuality.”

“I get it.”

“Midori and I got married. Even had a daughter. But, me being me, I had to screw it up.”

“Why?”

“She got older while I stayed the same. We had less in common every year. One rub the wrong way and I moved on to someone younger.”

“Sure Midori didn’t like that.”

“I took the best woman I met in the nineteen-hundreds for granted. Hurt her worse than anything anyone else had done to her. Still beat myself up over that.”

“You deserve to.”

“People do bad things, but that doesn’t make ‘em bad. It makes ‘em people. Heck, I wasn’t thinking right when I tried to goad you into a brawl earlier today.”

“Be that as it may, you hurt people when you don’t control yourself.”

“True. I left our daughter without a daddy. I didn’t reconnect with her until the nineties. She grew into a beautiful willowy thing, smart as a whip.”

“So she took after her mom.”

Chak gave Alex a cockeyed look. “She had better taste in men. She married a self-made millionaire named Hiro Takeda.”

“Takeda. That was the last name of the first MacGuffin victim.”

“That was my grandson. Their boy had potential, but he ran with rich kids who did anything they wanted when they weren’t in rehab. Wish I could’ve done something for him, like give him some life lessons.”

Alex pointed at Chak’s bare feet. “People who can’t tie their own shoes shouldn’t give life lessons.”

“Can you not ride my ass for a minute? I’m trying to make a point.”

“Fine. What’s your point?”

“My point is, when I heard my grandson died,” Chak wiped his eyes, “I couldn’t protect someone I cared about. I wanted to prove I wasn’t weak by making someone responsible hurt worse than I did. I’ll bet Qing Long felt the same way.”

“I get it, this was about avenging your grandson’s death and Qing Long avenging … whatever is in the boat was to him.”

“Not sure if ‘avenging’ is the right word. I don’t know what I would’ve done if I was face-to-face and alone with those bastards who made the drug. I really thought I’d cut ‘em apart.”

“And I’d try to stop you but probably would’ve gotten cut apart.”

“Wouldn’t have happened. I backed down when you were taken hostage, didn’t I? Wouldn’t do that for someone I didn’t like.”

“You like me? Hate to see how you treat people you hate.”

“I cut them apart.”

“Oh, right, yeah.”

“I’ve met enough people to tell a good one from a bad one from a bad one who thinks he’s a good one. I hated Sergeant Hammer and Jim Griffin, which is why I never wanted to join the New York Guardians before. You, though, ain’t so bad. That’s why I went along with Bart’s idea to bring you out here. I needed someone to either rein me in or take me in. A man my age knows how stupid he can be.”

“How old are you?”

“Old enough to know we never stop screwing up. We all lie to ourselves when we think we’ll become better people. We’re always us. The only thing harder than making the same mistakes over and over again is making yourself someone new.”

“Change is a part of life.”

“For you, maybe. The world moves faster than I can. The Cree called me the boy who never grew up because I stayed young while others became elders. They didn’t understand why I never died, so they made myths about Chahkabesh, the boy who killed giants, trapped the sun, and lived on the moon.”

“That’s what you meant when you said myths are more real than you know.”

“But myths don’t get to change. They’re always what they are. They only get understood differently. Retold with new parts so they make sense for each generation.”

Alex’s phone rang. He recognized the number and pressed the accept button. “Bart?”

Chak’s acute hearing allowed him to hear Bart, the ultra-athlete publically known as Arbalest, say, “Hey, you gotta get rid of Kayleigh. She screwed up royally today.”

Alex said, “I won’t do anything until I get her side of the story.”

Chak snatched the phone. “That wouldn’t be the same little lady you didn’t want to help after she got hurt, would it?”

Alex heard Bart try to backtrack before Chak launched into a torrent of obscenity-laden insults.

Chak wiped his spittle from the phone and handed it back to Alex. “He’ll think twice before he’s anything less than a gentleman.”

“He’ll probably withdraw your nomination for the New York Guardians.”

“I’m all for helping your team, but I won’t compromise who I am. I don’t schmooze.”

“Maybe we do need you more than you need us.” Alex looked at the docks. Through the drizzle, two star-like eyes looked back at him. “Qing Long. He’s back.”

“I see him. Right by that warehouse with the peeling paint.”

“What does he want?”

“There’s only one way to find out. We’ll dock in a few minutes.”

“If he wanted to kill me, he could have. You don’t have to come.”

“I gotta see this through. Remember, disrespect a dragon and it’ll leave a path of destruction. Treat it right, you’re blessed with fortune.”

“I don’t care about fortune. I don’t want anyone else to die.”

Alex and Chak gave the most cursory statements possible to Max and the other police officers who met them when the tugboat pulled alongside the pier. Alex expected to get a lot of questions about witnesses reporting something huge and fearsome flying out of the ocean, but to his surprise Max didn’t ask about that.