I blasted him with my knee. He twisted his leg at the last second, but I clipped his groin hard enough to make him let go. He staggered back, trying to stand up straight as I grabbed his suit jacket and pulled it down back over his shoulders until his elbows were pinned. While he was off balance, I shoved him forward as hard as I could and he went face-first into the wall.
“Goddamn it!” he grunted. He wasn’t carrying his gun, but there was a stunner clipped to his belt. I snatched it and squeezed the grip as he tried to push away, jamming the business end into his ribs. His eyes bugged out as the prongs made a rapid-fire popping sound, and then he pitched over on his side and went limp. Breathing hard, I tossed the stun gun down on the blacktop next to him where his cigarette pack had fallen from his shirt pocket. I took it and backed out of the alley. The people up and down the street were still boozing it up, laughing, and talking. None of them even looked over.
“Sorry, Kang.”
I stuffed the smokes into my pocket and headed back out to the street. A bottle rocket whistled high into the air and then popped as I pulled the mask back down and sprinted back to where they were working on the parade float.
Overhead, the silhouette of an aircar drifted past as I approached the gate, a cone of light shining down and sweeping the sidewalk back behind me on the lookout for trouble it had just missed.
Chapter Thirteen
09:53:21 BC
By the time I got back to Wei’s, dawn had begun to peter down through the neon haze, and the streets had thinned out as much as they ever did. Most of the derelicts from the night before had abandoned their spots on the old stoops and left behind bottles, butts, and crumpled paper bags. The sign for Wei’s buzzed, casting a feeble red glow onto the grungy landing as I climbed down to the heavy door.
Just as I grabbed the handle, the door flew open and some big dude knocked me back as he barged through. I went down on the concrete steps but he just blew right past, not even looking back as he hustled down the sidewalk.
“Excuse you, asshole!” I yelled after him.
I got back up and brushed off, then pulled open the door and headed inside. The lobby was empty, but I could hear voices down the hall, anxious voices that put me on edge. Something was up, a fight maybe. I wondered if the guy I’d just passed hadn’t just robbed the place or something.
When I got to the corner, a woman in a miniskirt and heavy lipstick came scooting around to squeeze past me. Her eyes were streaked with mascara, and she carried her heels in one hand.
“Hey,” I called. “What’s going on?” She didn’t answer. She shoved open the door and took off.
Something was up. No cops yet, but they probably weren’t far off. We were going to have to make ourselves scarce before they got here or else…
I rounded the corner and saw Wei’s foyer. The force field was down and the window on the other side had been blown in, the heavy glass splintered around a fist-sized hole. The metal mesh sandwiched between the layers had been pushed through the crater, and wire bristles ringed the hole.
I rushed over to Wei’s door, which hung open, the jamb splintered. Wei lay inside on his back next to a toppled stool.
“Wei!”
I kicked through the trash that had spilled from a waste bin and knelt down next to him, pushing the jiangshi mask back to hang behind my head. His right leg was snapped at the shin, and his nose was smashed flat. Blood had run down his neck and stained the collar of his shirt.
“Wei,” I whispered, leaning close to him. One of his eyes was swollen shut, but the other opened a slit and I caught a gleam there. He was still breathing. The cords in his neck twitched as he swallowed.
“I didn’t…,” he rasped.
“Wei, what happened?”
He looked confused, like he wasn’t sure where he was. His eyes swam for second, then focused on me.
“When they… took you…,” he wheezed.
“Took me?”
“When they took… you… I…”
I realized then that he was talking about the meat farmers, all those years ago.
“I know, Wei,” I said. “I know. Just tell me what happened.”
“I looked… for you… for days…”
“Never mind all that,” I said in his ear. “Who did this?”
“Soldier…”
“A soldier attacked you?”
He managed a nod.
“She’s gunning… for you,” he whispered.
I glanced back through the open doorway and saw someone scoot past, headed for the front door. More voices shouted from somewhere down the hall, and then something crashed.
“Get out,” Wei said. “Quick.”
Damn it. I couldn’t tell if any of the voices belonged to Vamp or Nix.
“I can’t,” I told him. “Just don’t move. Stay still.”
He pawed with one hand, and I saw that his fingers had been broken. With his swollen, knobby index finger he pointed at the safe under his desk. The door was open a crack.
I pulled it open. Inside were stacks of documents, some paper money, and on the top shelf, sitting on top of a couple of ration sheets, was a small, snub-nosed pistol. I grabbed it. It felt light in my hand, but solid. The surface was worn and dull, like it was old. When I squeezed the grip, the holostamp that nickered into the air next to it showed twenty-two rounds.
“Go,” he said. “Get out of here.”
“I can’t, Wei.”
“She’ll kill you,” he said. “Don’t go back there.”
He coughed, spritzing blood as he tried to say something else, but I stopped him.
“Just lie still,” I told him. “Take it easy.”
“Wait,” he moaned.
Gun at the ready, I slipped back out through the door and sprinted down the hall. A guy sporting a bloody gash on his forehead ran past me headed the other way, and up ahead the body of a bald man lay facedown in a pool of blood. His soaked left sleeve hung to the floor, and a long red spatter led across the tiles to a severed, tattooed arm that lay amid overlapping sneaker tracks. Just past that, the door to our room hung open.
“She won’t come back,” I heard Vamp say from inside. “I told you, I already warned her. She’s long gone.”
“She isn’t,” a woman’s voice said. It was Sillith. I crept up and crouched next to the doorway, listening.
“She doesn’t know anything,” Vamp said. “Why don’t you just leave her alone?”
Don’t antagonize her, I pleaded silently. Vamp didn’t know what he was dealing with.
“She knows,” Sillith said.
I risked a quick peek and saw her standing with her back to the door. Vamp sat on the bed, the sheets still wadded up next to him, and Nix stood in the spot where he’d been sleeping when I left.
The combat armor would stop a handgun round. If I could put a shot into the dispersion mask, I should hit her in the face, which was probably unprotected, but that was a shot I wasn’t sure I could pull off.
“I know you’re there,” Sillith purred. “If you don’t come out, I will kill your male.”
I stood up and stepped into the doorway. Through the mite cluster, I felt satisfaction course just underneath her excitement over the promise of more violence.
“You really get a charge out of this, huh?” I asked her.
“Step into the room.”
I took a step forward, and as I did I saw Vamp slink off the bed and move in behind her. I opened my mouth to stop him, but it was too late. She turned, and Vamp threw a punch directly into the face of the dispersion mask.
“Vamp, don’t!”
His fist disappeared into the field, but I heard the thud and Sillith stumbled back a step as he threw a follow-up that caught her right in the face again, and she reeled.