Dim Sum Asylum(80)
“Planning on opening the door, or are we just going to stand here?” He glanced up at the sky. “Sure, it’s not pouring down any more but—”
“This is too easy.” I paused, reluctant to pull the gate open, and instead took a mental tally of the weapons I had on me. Other than my Glock, I had two of the long daggers my mother gave me in my teens strapped to my forearms, and with the help of one of the arcane librarians, I’d loaded my pockets up with as many spell components as I could carry while still being able to walk. I felt as prepared for whatever lay beyond as I ever could be, and still I hesitated. “God, every bit of me is screaming trap. But we know they’re in there if we believe my grandfather.”
“He’s got no reason to lie and everything to gain if we go in through that door.” Trent scanned the area behind me. “I’m just hoping the asshole is alone.”
He sounded more confident than I felt, but then he also had a Hell of a lot more innate magic than I did. The only magic I was carrying was my funky blood mix and a bit of sparkle leftover from some dead mage tucked somewhere in the family tree.
“Gut says yes.” Moving my wrists up and down, I made sure I could get to the daggers if I needed them on the fly. The thin leather straps were comfortable, worn in from years of use, but it never hurt to have a final check. “I think there’s an ego there, and he won’t stand for anyone else to get credit for what he’s done.”
We were supposed to end up in a courtyard near the main house. According the overhead shots and Grandfather’s schematics, the layout was standard Japanese estate, lots of outer hallways, river-smoothed gravel courtyards, and sweeping trees poised on hillocks and around water features. A small teahouse sat on a man-made island at the back of the property, secluded from the rest of the house by a grove of willows and surrounded by a shallow pond. The other option the kidnapper had was a gardening shed a few hundred yards away from the teahouse, because I couldn’t see him locking the women into the main house. He’d want to minimize access to communication, although the idiot did leave Yukiko’s nearly dead phone on her—but I couldn’t discount that as the caster wanting her to call Takahashi for help. One last plea to drive home her helpless situation.
“Here goes,” I murmured, opening the gate latch. “I’m low.”
We’d never gone through a door together, but something about Trent and I synced. We went in silent, a single nod from me starting our entry. Ducking, I had my weapon out and swept the space while looking for any movement. Trent was a step behind me, his knee brushing the back of my thigh as he turned to cover my left. With only two of us, it was a harder shuffle to go in, and the courtyard was larger than it’d looked on the blueprints. The main house was directly in front of us with a pair of long formal entrance buildings to the right. Water slickened the cement walk between the structures, and I was glad for the gravel beneath our feet as we worked inward toward the central building.
The compound looked ancient, but I saw bits of modern touches here and there. A gazing pond in the middle of the courtyard was lit with thousands of faerie lights, the magical motes swaying through the trees, and discreet speakers hung along the eaves of the broad pergola connecting the front structures to the main house, a faint instrumental playing under the pounding rush of the thickening rain. An enormous flat fountain splashed slender jets of water back down into the pond, its delicate spray obliterated in the storm. In true Takahashi fashion, his ego wouldn’t allow him to not smear his ownership on the property. An enormous dragonfly made of concrete and glass wrapped around the fountain’s main spire, its curved wings stretching up past the pergola surrounding it.
Even in the ravages of a passing storm, it was all very peaceful, and if I was ever interested in living farther away from the city—and had all the money in the world to spend—it would probably be where I’d want to live.
But something was wrong. I couldn’t put my finger on it, but there was something wrong. I slowed my steps, hedging Trent back. He stepped around me, glanced once at my face, then turned his attention back to the yard.
“Okay, you’re kind of scary right now,” Trent shouted at me. “Your eyes are going red.” He motioned with little circles at his face. “Just around the edges. The whirling into the copper is very weird.”
“Something’s… off.” I kept my gun up, but the tickle at the back of my brain grew. Something about the water gushing up from the pond, coursing back down in curved sweeps, felt off. We were somewhat protected from the rain by a lush maple, one of many dotting the yard. “There’s a wrongness—the fountain’s—that’s not right.”
The outer wall behind us gave way, a shattering rumble nearly as loud as the thunder rolling over the Bay, and a keening chit-chit-chit sound burned through my ears. A pair of stone mandibles bit into the maple, severing one of its thick branches, and the snapped-off wood came crashing down, burying us in its leaves. A smaller branch struck my back, shoving me into muddy gravel, and I lost Trent in the foliage. With my hands tangled in the damp leaves, I tried kicking out with my free leg, hoping to clear the branch from my lower back, but I wasn’t gaining any ground, and the animated monster slowly dug its sharp front tarsus into the maple’s thick trunk as it struggled to get over the wall’s rubble.
I hadn’t been able to pinpoint what felt off about the courtyard’s fountain, probably because I’d only seen it from above, but it was definitely missing a few pieces, notably two of its Tombo. If I survived long enough to see my grandfather again, I was going to have a serious talk with him about his obsession with our family’s mon.