Walker reached up with a shaking hand and very slowly turned the radio off.
The creature sniffed his hand.
Walker didn’t dare move.
Suddenly the chimera grabbed him by the leg and began to drag him toward the center of the city. The viselike grip didn’t hurt, but there was no escaping it. Walker held on to his Stoner with both hands, hugging it to his chest, at the same time keeping his head from bouncing along the scorched earth.
They’d gone perhaps three blocks before a great horn sounded. The qilin stopped. It let go of Walker and raised its head. The sound came again. The qilin glanced once more at Walker, then took off at a gallop toward the sound.
It took Walker a few minutes to get his strength back. He stood unsteadily. Looking around, he realized that the streets were widening. Where were the cars? Where were the homes? Everything was gone. What was even more astounding was that he hadn’t been eaten. Whatever had driven the mythological monster to take him had also freed him as it called the qilin back.
61
He stood, staring at the cricket pitch through the scope of his Stoner, for five minutes. There was nothing that could have prepared him for what he saw.
A thousand wooden crates rested on the pitch, aligned into grids. Atop each crate was a man, woman, or child, naked except for a dagger each held in their hands. The front row held three men he recognized—Laws, Ruiz, and Holmes standing on crates as well. Unlike the others, the SEALs were chained to the wood at each wrist and ankle, forcing them into the position of a dog. They’d been beaten. Blood was dripping from their faces onto the wood.
In front of them, looking ten feet tall, stood a man who could only be Chi Long. He wore chitinous medieval Chinese armor composed of green and silver scales. At his shoulders and feet were the heads of dragons in an aqua blue. They writhed upon his limbs, as if they were alive, but remained where they were. There was a red cloak beneath his armor. Tattered and scorched in places, it flowed several feet behind him like a battered bridal train.
But it was the face that transfixed Walker. Beneath a mane of luxuriously long black hair was the face of a dead thing. As if Chi Long had crawled from a barrow or crypt, the skin and sinew of his face was pulled back as tight as a drum. The skin had aged to the color of ochre, highlighting a mouthful of spiked teeth and fierce yellow glowing eyes.
Chi Long held a dagger in his right hand, and even as Walker watched, Chi Long pointed it to the sky that was beginning to brighten with the coming dawn.
Having seen what a sacrifice of blood could do to the contents of a single crate, Walker could only imagine what would happen if a thousand Karen did the same on the killing pitch.
Switching the selector switch to Fire, he took careful aim.
And fired.
A puff of dust exploded from the back of the demon’s head as the bullet tore through it.
He fired again, confused by the result.
He was rewarded with another puff of dust.
Chi Long turned toward him. As he watched, the holes made by his rounds closed.
The demon pointed at Walker. He felt its power from a hundred yards away. Then the demon curled its finger in the universal gesture of Come here.
Walker tried to squeeze the trigger, but found that his fingers no longer worked. The Stoner fell from his now paralyzed hands. Once again he was a child. The day was heavy with rain and he’d been walking home alone from school. It had begun with a whisper, one that he’d finally answered.
“Who is it?”
“Please,” came the low, soft voice from everywhere and nowhere at all.
“I can’t see you,” he’d said, such an innocent child about to be taken. “Who are you?”
“I am alone. I am lonely,” came the voice, now not so soft, sounding more like the crunching of broken glass.
Little Jackie Walker had felt the fear then.
He’d thought about running.
Maybe if he had, nothing would have happened.
Maybe if he had, his father wouldn’t have been killed trying to get payback.
Maybe if he had, he’d have lived the life of a regular kid with regular problems.
But he’d never know. He’d never know because he’d decided to be curious.
“Who are you?” he’d asked. “Where are you hiding?”
Then the words came in too many languages, sometimes all at once, sometimes separate. It sounded like a child. It sounded like a man. It sounded like a woman. It sounded like everyone and no one.
Then it said one word—“Jackie”—and everything went black.
Walker stumbled and found that he’d been moving toward Chi Long. He was less than a dozen feet from Chi Long and was unable to stop. He moved to within a half foot of the demon, who looked him up and down. He sniffed Walker, having to bend almost completely over to do so. Walker smelled the scent of hyacinth and death coming from the armor.
“Aaah, yesss,” said the demon. “We knew you once. You were ours.”
Walker’s eyes rolled into his head as he fought against Chi Long’s power. He didn’t know what the demon meant, but he needed to free himself. He had a pistol on his right thigh and a knife on his left thigh.
“Take this.” Chi Long handed Walker a long, wickedly curved dagger.
In Walker’s mind’s eye, he jammed it into Chi Long’s face, but in reality he found himself raising the knife and walking stiff-legged to where Laws was chained to a crate. Walker felt the impetus of the knife before it reached its destination.
Run, Laws! he screamed inside. Come on, man, please!
But Laws couldn’t move. He pulled himself to the end of his chains and made a furious face. “Snap out of it, kid!”
The knife came down slowly, piercing the skin of Laws’s arm, sliding through it ever so slowly.
Laws screamed.
Walker screamed on the inside. But it didn’t help. He walked around the other side of the crate and stabbed Laws in his other arm.
They both screamed again, inside and out.
Then he was forced to turn to Holmes. His knife hand rose, but then the control went away. Once again, he was his own. He turned to Chi Long in time to see a qilin spike buried in his chest and Yaya’s other hand coming around to stab him with another. Just as the second spike penetrated the demon’s chest, the demon screamed in outrage and flung Yaya away. Chi Long staggered.
Walker’s paralysis gone, he leaped forward and plunged the knife into Chi Long’s back. He started to yank it out and stab the monster again, but Holmes’s shout made him turn.
“Hurry, Walker!”
Now free of Chi Long’s influence, Walker shook his head to rid himself of the remnants of control, then hurried to comply. Each of the chains holding the other SEALs was held in place by a bolt, beyond their reach. But it was easy for Walker to release them.
They climbed down to the ground.
“What took you so long?” Ruiz asked.
Laws clenched his teeth as he ripped his shirt into strips to bind his wounds.
“Form a circle, SEALs. Here they come,” Holmes ordered.
Walker handed Laws the 9mm pistol and drew his own knife. The thousand or so Karen, who until this moment had been prepared to sacrifice themselves in order to give birth to the army of qilin, were climbing from their crates and running toward the SEALs.