Dim Sum Asylum(4)
“That insect? These aren’t people! They’re goddamned faerie,” he shouted. “Figured you’d take their side. Fucking splice! You’re a disgrace to the badge. We fucking bled to protect this damned city, and things like you walk on in and take rank. Makes me fucking sick.”
“Killing fae holds the same sentence as it does a human, Arnett,” I said, trying for calm, but my voice sounded unsteady even to my ringing ears. Between the hum of the dragons and the shot going off near me, it was hard to hear myself think. “No matter what happens here, you’ll be nailed for that. Don’t make things worse.”
“Shit, I should do SF Metro and the Asylum a favor and cap you. Damn cross-breed! I couldn’t believe the Captain when he told me I had to work with a splice—”
“I’m not a splice, Myron,” I refuted. It was more a distraction than anything else. Something to keep him off-kilter. “I’m natural born. It does happen. My parents didn’t manipulate genetics to get me. I just happened. You know that.”
It didn’t matter what I was or wasn’t. Arnett wasn’t having any of it. I’d seen the same kind of wild in his eyes during the Riots and when I’d been working a beat in cop blues. Reasoning with him wasn’t an option now. Maybe it’d never been. If I had any doubts left, he put them to bed with a wad of spittle flung into my face.
“Bullshit. Your kind doesn’t happen unless someone fucks with things. It’s a damned conspiracy to pollute the human race. Is that what you’re planning on doing, huh? Lay your fucking insect eggs in our bodies?” Arnett’s lips were speckled with foam. “We should have gassed the lot of you a long time ago but now it’s too late and you bastards are everywhere, like damned roaches.”
The woman’s dark eyes were wide, and she trembled in Arnett’s grip. I didn’t blame her for whimpering. With a gun pressed against her temple and seeing her friend killed in front of her, she had every right to go into shock. What I needed from her was a shred of common sense, and I hoped she understood me when I flexed my shoulders forward as I stared hard into her frightened face.
Hitching her breath, she groaned when Arnett pulled her farther back. He held her tightly, wrenching her to the side. With her fae-fragile body, she was no match for his strength, but nature had a way of equalizing things between predators. Biting her lip, the woman squared her body and lifted her shoulders, unfurling her thick-framed wings.
Most humans assumed a fae’s wings were fragile, but their veins are rigid and as hard as steel. Her span unfolded swiftly, wings slamming into Arnett’s face and knocking him back when their radius struck him hard. Stumbling, he tried to maintain his balance, and the skein hummed behind me, weaving up and down in arcs, hungry to latch onto his exposed skin. Tucking her wings fully back, she hit him again, and the pterostigma on her membranes flashed before she hit the ground and rolled away.
For luck, I thumbed the three black stars inked on the inside of my left wrist, sent a plea to Pele, then took aim and squeezed off a shot, then another. The Glock jerked in my hand, pulling up slightly as each round went off.
Myron spun about, his mouth open wide in shock. The third bullet hit him square in the upper arm, burrowing into his torso. He spat, choking on a mouthful of blood, and the dragons fell on him, rage packaged in tight serpentine bodies. The smallest one dug through Myron’s jacket and shrieked loud enough to be heard over the ferry’s departing bellow. I lost sight of it for a second. Then it surfaced, a faceted golden orb clutched tightly in its teeth. Another emerged with an egg, spiraling upward so another could forage through Myron’s pockets. The others worked at his torn flesh, digging down to the bone and tearing out long strips of meat and muscle.
“Drop it!” the voice behind me barked, edged with authority, but it didn’t give me much warning to anything beyond taking my next breath.
The rush of footsteps behind me grew louder, and I staggered when the first uniform hit me, then went down under the next. My arms were pulled up behind me, and a foot pinned my gun hand to my back. Handcuffs bit my wrists, and my elbow was twisted sharply, pulling my shoulder blades together. Someone’s fingers grabbed a handful of my hair and pulled it back. The sidewalk came up fast and painful when someone plowed me into the boards. I twisted around, spitting out the salty dirt carried over from the Bay’s shore. The cut on my face reopened, and my blood dripped onto the pier. The wood was too damp to soak it in, and it pooled, smearing on my chin as one of the cops dragged me across the plank, then up to my knees.
“Hey!” I flicked out the debris on my lip. “Check my belt. SF Metro, Chinatown Arcane Crimes Division. Senior Inspector MacCormick, Roku. I’m under Captain Gaines.”
A plainclothes cop fumbled around near my waist, the credentials on his lanyard hitting my face. He pulled my badge from its hook on my belt and stepped back, then called in the number for confirmation. I heard the squawk of a radio and then a string of Cantonese from the officer’s dispatch. He approached me carefully, eyeing Arnett as the medical techs attempted to separate the dragons from their buffet.
One of the smaller dragons was digging through his suit pocket, rolling the eggs out for the larger ones to retrieve. Their chittering and enthusiasm would have been adorably cute if it weren’t for the shreds of meat hanging from their muzzles and the thick layer of drying blood coating their rainbow-prism scales.