Dim Sum Asylum(22)
If the shrine god upended whatever the old couple was using to bank their fire, the flames would quickly eat through the gōngyù before the moon could rise above the cloud bank gripping the district. Fire was a very real threat to the rooftop ghettos. Despite the damp air and fog moistening the outer structures, surrounding walls blocked most of the interior shacks, leaving them as dry as seasoned kindling. It was not a scenario I wanted to think about. I’d rather the damned statue disappear into the night than have Chinatown burn to the ground.
More crashes followed, and the old man’s shouts grew strident. I was through the door with a push of my shoulder and prayed Gaines would sign off on more damages. From the sounds of things inside the shack, there were going to be plenty of damages.
The old man was human, furious, and armed with a mallet that he wielded at my head with a deadly accuracy. The hit was a good one, smashing across my temple, and I saw stars and stumbled, nearly going down on one knee.
“Stop!” I flung my arm up, hoping to block his next blow. “I’m a cop!”
His eyes were pale, nearly colorless, and as wild as a cheated whore. A loose kimono covered most of his scrawny body, but it did nothing to hide his distended pot belly or knobby knees. The snaps on his robe gave under the push of his stomach, popping open when he took another swing, and I was treated to the sight of his time-grayed BVDs, the front pouch sagging with worn elastic.
He hit me again, and my arm wasn’t enough to stop him. He struck my jaw hard enough to rattle my teeth, and I flung myself back to get away from him. A plastic vegetable crate broke my fall, a corner digging through my jeans. The mallet swung again, and the old man screamed for his wife to flee while he kept me back. Another swing and I caught the wooden hammer with my shoulder, nearly dropping my Glock when my fingers went numb. As much as I didn’t want to shoot the old man, it was tempting, especially when he raised the damned mallet again. Flashing my badge, I shoved him back with my aching shoulder, tumbling him through the open door.
“Don’t make me shoot you, Uncle.” I shoved again, pushing him away. “I have enough problems.”
“I got him!” My partner appeared in the frame just as the old man began to spit curses at me, and Leonard’s massive arms closed around the old man’s chest, pulling him back out of the shanty. The cursing continued, this time in a fae-accented Cantonese, either from the woman I’d met earlier or some other resident in the loony bin we’d stumbled upon. Leonard jerked the man clear and set him down outside of my field of view, and I turned, leaving him to handle the rest of the insanity outside.
Because my prey was rattling around someplace in the cramped shack, and I just had to find it.
The shack had no interior walls, although there’d been an attempt to provide some privacy with screens around a makeshift camp toilet. The couple either was readying to go to bed or simply left their futon open, because it stretched out along one wall, propped up on shipping pallets away from the flattened cardboard boxes they used for flooring. The stovepipe was connected to a converted keg, insulated with thin firebrick, and set into a propane tank rest. Their lives were stashed away into colorful crates marked for apples and cabbages, and judging by the bubbling set of beakers and tubes on a card table, they also appeared to be brewing some kind of hooch.
Books and knickknacks made up most of the mess around me, spilling out from bookshelves lining the shanty’s walls. A clothesline stretched across a space I gathered they used as a kitchen, a basket of daikon and carrots airing out below a flutter of drying panties and worn T-shirts held by binder clips. The place wasn’t as bad as some I’d seen, and despite the old man trying to play whack-a-troll with my head, they seemed like a nice couple.
It was a pity I was going to have to tear the place apart to look for a malevolent statue with too much magic shoved up its ass.
I caught movement near the futon, a rustle in the pillows big enough to catch my eye, and I prayed it wasn’t a cat. I shoved my gun away, then reached for the tea leaves. I didn’t have time to shut down the fire in the keg. It would take my attention off the statue, and I couldn’t trust the people outside to keep the thing contained. From the sounds of things, Leonard had his hands full with the couple, and a murmuring rabble was forming just outside of the broken-in door. We’d tapped for backup on our phones as soon as we hit the roof, but Dispatch hadn’t promised anything other than best wishes and maybe a cup of hot coffee when we got back.
Arcane crimes, while glamorous and exciting, didn’t carry as much weight as homicides and burglaries. We were on our own and armed with plastic baggies of black tea leaves.
The cursed thing broke free of the futon, and I lunged at it, knocking over a pile of books on advanced mathematics. Pens from a fallen cup scattered over the cardboard, and the shrine god scrambled for purchase on the floor, its three good limbs windmilling about. Loose cardboard slid out from under my foot, and I tumbled forward and smashed my head against the pallets. My forehead stung, and a wet red dribble flowed down into my eyes, falling to the floor.
“Fuck!” The last thing the already cursed statue needed was my blood. I was a hybrid, an unnatural fluke of conception no rampaging fertility icon needed to bathe in. I grabbed a towel from the floor, wiped off my temple, and stood up. “Come here, you little bastard.”
There was barely a trace of bloody prints on the cardboard, and the glistening wet path led straight for the door. Great, I literally just poured gasoline on an out of control fire. The damned thing was going to suck every bit of my fae out of my blood straight into its curse, pretty much powering it up and setting it loose to cause more chaos.