Dim Sum Asylum(79)
I didn’t miss it. I missed the people I’d shared that life with, but the daily trudge down winding black roads with gaily painted mailboxes and the infrequent lemonade stand was never how I’d imagined my life would go. As lonely as it’d been without John and the girls, I’d been comforted by the familiar, the spice of sound and smells coming up from Chinatown’s cramped, busy streets.
But I still missed the fuck out of them, and a part of me—a deep, aching, weeping part—would never heal over that wound. Now I wondered if I was that wound for Yukiko… for my grandfather… a piece of them that’ll never be there. Not like I ever had been.
“You okay?” Trent’s prodding broke through the gloom of my thoughts. “We’re about two blocks out. Just past the grade there and we’ll be in the neighborhood. You thinking we should wait for backup?”
“No,” I said around a grimace. “No to the second. Yeah to the first. I’m fine. Just… geese flying over my grave. I think that’s the phrase.”
“Never heard that before,” he admitted. “But then I’ve got holes in my knowledge. Not a lot of anecdotes and homilies told around the campfires when you’re dodging sniper or phoenix fire. Holy crap. Look at these houses.”
At some point in the road, we’d left the working middle-class behind and entered a world I’d never known, a rarified place of high walls, fixed sightseers, and security cameras on columns set ten feet apart around a property line with signs announcing the promise of armed security guards routinely patrolling the area. The broad street with its gated homes and enormous ancient trees wrapped around the hills’ upper mounds, providing the best view and privacy money could buy.
It was also deserted as Hell and drenched in the torrential rain, thick with the soupy fog rising from the Bay.
The mists rolled up and over us, choking away any visibility in its nebulous fist. A salty taint clung to it, the barest kiss of the Pacific beneath a sulfurous slap from the arcane sconces running along the top of an estate’s black rock walls. Trent was forced to bring the sedan to a crawl, unsure of the terrain despite the map we were following. The road dipped and rose, following the natural lines of the land.
“Where are we?” Trent peered through the windshield, the glass clouding where his breath hit it. “We should be right on top of it.”
“Technically this used to be the Presidio. Or at least a part of the golf course. Now this part and some of the old post are where you spend a lot of money to live someplace no one can get to you.” I tried to look through the trees and vaguely spotted the Spire. “There it is. Go past it and park at the end of the property line. There’s some tree cover there.”
We spent a few minutes going over what we knew of the estate and the access codes my grandfather passed along to me, then another minute staring at the wall. The inside of the sedan grew warm, muggy from our breathing and the heat of our worry. I did one final check of the antispell components in the pockets in my raid jacket, trying to recall the last time I’d had its enchantments refreshed. Trent’s nearly sparkled as he fought to get it around his massive shoulders, clipping me with his elbow when he shook out his arm. He probably gave me an apology, but I wasn’t listening, too lost in the futility of what we were about to do. It wasn’t until his hand closed over the back of my neck and he leaned in to kiss the breath from my body that I realized it was time to go.
“You always kiss your team before you go storming the castle?” I tried teasing, but it felt flat, disconnected from the turmoil inside of me. My belly warmed from Trent’s contact, and despite every admonishment I’d given myself about sleeping with him… wanting him… I was damned glad he was there.
“You’re the first one I’ve ever wanted to kiss,” he confessed. “Not that I’ve been a saint, but… certainly not been a sinner. You make me want to sin something fierce, Roku, so let’s get through this, and we can go back to your place, make sure the cat’s got something to keep her busy. Then we can get back to figuring out every way our bodies can fit into each other. Sound good?”
“So, you’re a carrot–stick kind of guy, then? ’Cause that’s a Hell of a carrot.” I laughed despite the worry gnawing at my spine. What Trent was offering… what he held out to me in those few words… I was afraid to take. I’d already lost too many people, but damn, he felt good against me and in my life. “Okay, I’ll send Gaines a text telling him we’re going in. With luck, he’ll have someone coming up the hill behind us, and this’ll go down quick and easy.”
“And if it doesn’t, that’s fine,” Trent murmured, grabbing the shotgun he’d primed with iron-speckled salt rounds. “Because slow and dirty works for me too.”
THE DAMNED access code worked on the side gate. I stared at the green light for a good three seconds before Trent nudged me in the ribs. The wall was giving us some shelter from the downpour, but not enough to keep us dry. We’d been soaked immediately after getting out of the car, even though the rain appeared to be easing off. The rolling black clouds overwhelming the city were lightening to slate gray in spots. Somewhere above us, a nerve-shattering scream echoed across the hills, and I spotted a coiled draconian silhouette against a far-off splash of sheet lightning, but it was too far away for me to see which of the gate guardians was taking a swim through the storm.