Dim Sum Asylum(82)

“Can you hurry this up? We’re stuck between two of them, if you haven’t noticed,” Trent grumbled behind me. “And just because that other one hasn’t seen us yet doesn’t mean it won’t soon.”

“Just need to slow this one down.” The salt scatter was a quick arc from left to right, tossed straight from the small gray bag I had in my pocket. I didn’t need it to be a solid line. Not for the flash spell. Mixed with damp saltpeter, then cured in a rune bowl, the grains flashed when they hit the ground, then shimmered softly when I activated the casting. “That’ll hold it in for a bit. I don’t know how long. Maybe half an hour, but it could be less.”

“Get towards the house. At least we can use the eaves to get out of the rain.” Trent pointed to a corner of the Edo-style mansion my grandfather had built for his mistress… my grandmother. “The portico and risers can give us some defense. And we can get into the house if we need to.”

“God, my family is so fucked-up,” I grumbled, slogging after Trent. The other statue was fighting its way clear of the buildings. Then my heart skipped when I heard it go silent. “I think the other one hit on us. How are these things tracking? Movement? Heat?”

“Rain’s cold. It’ll bring our heat signature down. But we’re still warmer than the trees. Where is everyone? Your grandfather should have people—shit!” Trent broke into a sprint when the second dragonfly emerged from the archway between the buildings, scrambling over the wet cement after us. “Fuck, that thing’s on our ass. Is that a slide space under the damned house? Think we can fit under it?”

The building was raised, probably sitting on quake stabilizers, or it could have been a feature of the old architecture. Either way, I wasn’t all that fond of it. There were too many things slender enough to crawl into those spaces… and then I remembered the most paranoid asshole I knew had built the place.

“I wouldn’t go underneath. His specs didn’t have any crawl spaces laid out, and it’s probably a false front,” I said, motioning for Trent to come in tight against a mock-orange hedge. We hit the edge of the house, its white plaster sides rough on my palm when I bent over to take a peek. “Yeah, it’s solid about five inches in. It’s just for looks. Maybe access to plumbing if they have to break through. This is going to have to be good enough.”

A broad glossy golden wood platform floated above the gravel, spanning the entire front of the main house. Square black posts supported the deck’s crossbeams, its overhang covered with broad flat tiles the same ibushi hue as the house’s smaller scalloped roofing. The juts at the corners were nearly flat, lacking the upsweep common in Chinatown, and the roofline was a crazy quilt of angles where the different wings joined the main structure. Gridded wooden doors closed off the house’s multiple rooms and were access to the structure’s inner courtyard. It was a beautiful compound, but a glance to my left gave me a glimpse of the horrors of what we were facing once we got the dragonflies under control.

I found the compound’s people. One of the main house’s shoji doors sat cracked open, wide enough for me to see inside. At first I thought the floor was stained a dark black cherry, an odd choice considering the estate’s Japanese aesthetic, but then I noticed the skein of intestines lying in a pool near a woman’s head. Just her head.

She was youngish, maybe thirty. I didn’t know her. She could have been anyone—anything—to the people who lived at the compound. A sister or confidant, perhaps someone people disliked and avoided in the mornings. I’d never know. Her eyes were open, filmed over in death, and her skin lay slack on her skull, her cheek sagging down to squish into her lips. There was nothing left of her neck, and I couldn’t see the rest of her body, but the bits and pieces of body parts lying behind her were of many different sizes, so I knew she wasn’t the only one who lay dead beyond the door.

I couldn’t see any other sign of life besides Trent, me, and the thrashing dragonflies. The place echoed with a mournful devastation. My only hope was Jie and my grandmother were alive somewhere on the property, and the longer we took screwing around with the dragonflies, they would sink deeper and deeper into danger.

“Shit.” Trent’s gasp warmed my neck. His expression went bleak, sadness pulling down the corners of his mouth. “That’s…we can’t let this guy go, Roku. This is a slaughter.”

“Agreed. But right now we need focus and think this out,” I murmured, keeping one eye on the flailing dragonfly near the trees. I had to not look at the carnage, turning my back toward the slightly open door. The rain kept the smell of death down, but every once in a while, I’d catch a whiff of blood, yanking me back to the image of a woman’s head staring out at nothing. “Let’s guess they track by heat. Can you give us some cover with ice?”

“I can coat the bushes, but we’d stand out behind it. Won’t last long in this rain. Might give us a few seconds at best if it operates on signatures.” He shook his head. “I think our best bet is for me to attack and you go find the women.”

“Leaving you here isn’t an option. You can’t take them both.” I sifted through our options, but it was hard to focus with a dead woman’s eyes on me. “Okay, let me think.”

There was too much noise in my head, but one thing was for certain. No matter what happened today, I wouldn’t abandon Trent. He was an oddity to me still, but for some strange reason, we fit, worked better than I had with anyone else. Also, the sex was pretty damned intense, and I wasn’t going to go screaming into the night without knowing how he felt wrapped around me.