Dim Sum Asylum(3)
Wary, the lizards hovered above the heads of the fleeing crowd, their fierce draconian cries lost in the chaos and screams. Arnett took off, tucking his gun against his body and holding the flaps of his jacket down. Shaking my head, I ran after him with the dragons floating behind me.
“Sure, now you hide behind me, you damned scaly chickens.” I panted, rounding the corner and almost falling into the heavy morning traffic near the Embarcadero. Arnett was only a few yards away but still too far for me to tackle him to the ground. A transport ferry from the other side of the Bay was pulling up, announcing its arrival with a blare of its horn. “Son of a bitch. Don’t get on the ferry. Please. Shit.”
A pod of uisge bobbed up and down in the water, their merman handlers herding a smaller transport boat into its moorings. The ocean fae nudged their mounts around, smacking at the uisges’ flanks with their tails to keep the creatures from approaching the pier. One of the larger water horses pulled up sharp, its attention drawn by the commotion on the pier. Its rider wrapped his hand in its seaweed-entangled mane, forcing it to move into the rolling tide. The growing panic on the dock made each uisge nervous, and they rankled, drawing their front legs out of the Bay and slapping their algae-encrusted hooves against the water.
A crested caught up with me, snagging a warm current from an exhaust vent in the sidewalk. From its aggressive crooning, I guessed it was the deranged mutant who’d attacked Arnett. Buoyed by the hot air, it shot forward and snatched a mouthful of Arnett’s balding scalp.
Startled, Arnett let a shot off, but the lizard refused to scatter. He grabbed at the lizard, reaching behind him with his free hand, but the creature’s sleek body was too slippery for him to get a stranglehold on, and it slipped out between his fingers. Riding behind its prey’s wake, the dragon plunged in again, snapping at anything it could grab before Arnett was out of reach. It hounded him, leaving bites and raw pockmarks where its teeth hit.
“Get out of my way.” He fired into the air, sending the crested to flight, and the crowd panicked, becoming a tidal wave of rushing bodies. “Move!”
The ferry’s horn sounded again, followed by the high shriek of its warning klaxon, sounding its imminent departure. Angling across the wooden planks, he ran straight for the boarding deck, the back of his suit dark with sweat and a thin streak of glistening scales chasing him. Arnett was using everything he learned being a cop to drive the crowd into a stampede, but there was nothing I could do to stop him short of shooting him, and I did not want to shoot my partner.
I ran through the sea of frightened people, confusion reigning as they stumbled out of Arnett’s path. Many were workers heading to their buildings, but a few were tourists, up early for a tour of the fog-drenched Bay. The skein mostly kept pace with me, only falling behind when they hit a cold pocket, but they were the least of my worries. If Arnett made the gate, he’d be on the ferry when it pulled out, and there was no way I could make it on. I’d lose him, and with what he had in his pockets, he could make himself disappear for good….
From out of the corner of my eye, I saw a pair of fae women walking by Arnett, their nearly human faces sparkling with compound, pupilless irises, mascara-blackened eyelashes, and gloss-painted lips. The one on the right was a set of curves in a red suit and pretty features, while the other wore a velvet jacket cut to accommodate her slender wings. Red suit’s waifish body and pert triangular face were typical of an Emerald Isle fae, but her bicolored white and purple hair, cut into a messy bob, was rare. She was the type of woman most men would stop to talk to if there was time. As it was, I momentarily glanced into her widened eyes right before Arnett blew a hole through her head.
Oh Gods, her beautiful, ruined head.
Arnett’s shot left a gaping black hole where her nose and mouth had been, and her chin crumbled as her skull collapsed. Her blood splattered my face, and I tasted her death on my tongue. Her slender butterfly-patterned wings fluttered, catching the wind coming up from the water. Their connective spines lost their rigidity as she died, and they framed her delicate body, blowing out as she fell forward.
I couldn’t catch her. I had to let her fall. Her body kept moving, kept breathing, but her eyes were already dimming—then she was gone.
A scream pierced the air. The woman walking with her broke down and keened, a haunting sound that ended in tears. Her sobs were heart-wrenching, and her hands trembled as they covered her mouth. The round puff of a half-eaten bao tumbled from one of her hands, the bright char siu filling dull against the sharp red of the dead woman’s blood.
People scrambled to get away from Arnett, but in the confusion the crowd thickened, then thinned, making it nearly impossible for him to push through. I saw him turn, his eyes wild, and he reached for the screaming fae. He grabbed a handful of her long blue hair, jerked the woman against him, and placed the gun’s muzzle on her temple.
“Back off, MacCormick. I’ll kill this bitch too.”
Pulling out my gun, I came to a stop, panting hard. A cloud of fury and scales flew past me; then the skein retreated, hovering in the air. They dodged in and out, assessing the situation. At a standstill, Myron’s heft and size finally triggered their danger sense, but the drive to rescue their eggs would soon push them on, and I’d be stuck fighting off one of the largest skeins of crested dragons in the California Upper Regions.
“Let her go, Myron.” I didn’t have a lot of hope that he’d listen. Arnett never gave off the impression of being stable, and now as I stared him down, he appeared to have cracked open. “There’s nowhere to go. Come on. Make this easier on yourself. You’ve already killed one person. Let her go.”