Dim Sum Asylum
Rhys Ford
This book is dedicated to Lynn West, the Queen of the Flying Monkeys and Fantastical Things. You wanted faeries and dragons. Here you go, babe.
Acknowledgments
MUCH LOVE to the Five, the sisters of my soul: Tamm, Lea, Jenn, and Penn. Also to my other sisters, Mary, Ren, Ree, and Lisa.
A huge heartfelt thank-you to Elizabeth, Lynn, Grace, Naomi, lyric, and everyone at Dreamspinner Press for all of their hard work and faith. And Anne Cain for the rocking covers.
One
I HATED running first thing in the morning. Even in a fog-drenched San Francisco when the temperatures were on the colder side, it was too early and too damned hot to be pounding through the narrow sidewalks of Chinatown as merchants set up for a packed farmer’s market. I wasn’t made for long hauls at full speed, which was funny considering my faerie half pretty much should have handed me every stamina advantage. But evolution happened, so there wasn’t any need for a faerie’s wings to carry their body over long distances anymore, and since I didn’t inherit actual wings, I probably hadn’t stood in the genetics line for a fae’s stamina either.
For one of the few times in my life, I wished I’d inherited more of my mother’s fae hollow-bone structure than my father’s build. I could have run faster if I wasn’t built so human. I wouldn’t have said no to a pair of dragonfly wings either, even if they didn’t work. I’d gotten some ancestor’s long legs, and they came in handy to leap over a pile of decaying durian left on the sidewalk. My boot toe brushed one of the fruits, and I briefly wondered if I’d ever get the smell out of the leather as it exploded under the pressure of its rotted meat.
High above me, the gōngyù bridges spanning the streets cast long, hard shadows onto the pavement, the network of tangled arches burdened with the poor’s makeshift villages, resting a disjointed minicity above San Francisco’s tall buildings. Someone in a gōngyù nearby was smoking ducks, the crisp, spicy smell of curing meat settling down to the street below. If my mouth wasn’t already thick with saliva from the overexertion, the smell of roasting fowl would have done me in. I hadn’t eaten anything since a stale donut nearly twelve hours ago, such a typical cop trope, and I’d lived on high-octane coffee ever since I’d swallowed its last crumb.
Thank the Gods for the coffee or I’d have been flat on my face after the first few steps. Although my rage probably would have taken care of me because right at that moment the adrenaline pumping through my blood could have fueled a fleet of ferries across the Bay. I was that angry.
Dodging a stall of dried fish, I rolled over the counter of the next booth, narrowly avoiding a line of bins filled with cuttlefish and rock cod on ice. The stream of Cantonese that followed me wasn’t as hot and angry as the skein of Korean-crested dragons flying in my wake. While the lizards were only the length of a dachshund, there were at least ten of them with mouths filled with long pointy teeth, and they were extremely angry. No matter how small something was, if it had teeth and it was angry, it was something to be reckoned with.
Luckily, I wasn’t the one who’d pissed them off.
The man I was chasing was fat, wearing a badly fitted suit, and smelling of bean burritos. I’d have given up chasing after him if it wasn’t for one thing—eight things: he’d stashed an entire clutch from the crested dragons’ nest in his jacket’s deep pockets.
Above me, the crimson-and-green crested dragons dove past my head. They rode the air in undulating waves, their heads weaving side to side as they gave chase. Most draconian beings, big or small, flew using their wings. But Asiatic lizards’ flight was powered by the pearls in their foreheads, so I didn’t have to worry about being slapped in the head as they flew. I wasn’t even sure if I registered in their tiny little brains.
The odds of the dragons getting to him first were good, but having them actually do something to him was slim. Crested dragons were scavengers down to the bone. I’d seen one run from a live rat one-third its size but then savage a plucked turkey to ribbons after it had been left out for only moments while the cook heated up oil in the deep fryer.
Of course, I’d also never seen them after someone plundered their nests, so I could have it all wrong. For all I knew, they were going to carve him up into tiny jellied slices once they caught up with the egg thief, and I was going to have to fight them off just to make an ID. Whatever happened, Arnett was going to get what was coming to him, and hopefully it wasn’t going to be me pounding his face in because he’d screwed me over.
The early-morning chill made it difficult for the crested dragons to gain speed and altitude. Steady afternoon heat from the city’s streets gave them thermals to ride, and if they’d been a more aggressive species, I’d be looking at Arnett’s picked-over carcass draped with full-bellied, contented frill-headed lizards. Still, they were motivated to get their eggs back, and they buzzed around me, diving up and down above the heads of the morning foot traffic.
After the last wave of Asian immigrants a few years ago, the Chinatown district grew, extending down to Davis. The closed-in sprawl of the historic district migrated. Buildings were packed with entire generations of single families, and the area was difficult to maneuver in, walls moving as more or less space was needed by the inhabitants. I grew up in its sprawl. Arnett had not, and now he was running blind.