The Conclave of Shadow (10 page)

That seemed to do it for Abby. She shook off my hold and stalked forward, careful not to break the chalk-and-tape outline that seemed all that was necessary to keep Asha contained. “Forget it. Both of you. She's not going to do anything for us unless it's me doing the asking. Are you?”

“Professor Trent,” Sadakat traded a wary glance with La Reina, “I do not think that it is wise for you to lead the negotiations, given your feelings regarding our guest.” Both women frowned at me as though I'd failed in my job to keep Abby in check.

“Are you?” Abby repeated, glaring at Asha.

Finally, there was movement in the circle. Asha rose to her feet, twirling La Reina's feather like a child's toy. “Why should I agree to anything? You cannot hold me in this circle indefinitely. Not when we're in such a public place. And even if you could manage it, surely one of you might grow a conscience and question the ethics of such unlawful detainment.” Her eyes passed over all of us, seemed to rest just a bit longer on me than on the others. Her taunting words hit home, my pragmatic side warring with the larger part of me that cared about things like due process. The only thing that kept me from smudging out the chalk sigils binding her was the knowledge that she'd known about the attack and used it as cover for her own illegal activities. She'd embroiled herself in this of her own free will.

Pragmatic rationalization. It's a skill.

“One of us might,” I said. “If we did not all feel that we were offering you a fair and simple alternative to a messier and more prolonged legal process. You'll be freed once you agree to assist Argent's agents in recovering their stolen technology from the Conclave.”

“Mr Mystic, you don't know the Conclave as well as you should if you think that is a fair and simple alternative. I might be better off trying my chances with your legal system. I'd definitely be better off as cannon fodder in the Host's army.”

“You won't be,” La Reina said, and the hardness of her tone made me shiver.

Asha took a step back. The smile she turned on Abby was brittle, lacking the confidence of her previous smirks. “All this for… what did you call it? A bit of stolen tech?” The smile widened when Abby flinched. “Really Abby? Is that really your wish? Is that really how you want to spend your one chance to make me do whatever you want? To give you whatever you want?”

“Shut up.” Abby's voice trembled. “You don't have what I want.”

“No. But I know where it is. I know who has it. Our father trapped, all this time…”

I must have gasped when I realized what she was talking about, what I suspected she was offering Abby to betray us. The carpet their father was trapped in. Asha's glance flicked to me. “And I believe I even know how we might–”

“Shut. Up.” Abby's hand went to her side.

“Abigail!” I caught her elbow before her revolver cleared her holster. “You need to step away. Now.”

“Let go of me, Masters,” she growled. Not Old Man. Masters. She was talking to the person behind Mr Mystic. Which was fair. I wasn't sure Mitchell would have stopped her.

“Keep your weapon holstered, professor,” I said.

Abby's muscles tensed, and she tested my grip a few more moments before relaxing and ducking her head.

“I wouldn't have shot her, you know,” she grumbled. “No matter how fucking annoying she is, she's still family.”

“Yes,” I murmured. “And you only shoot strangers, as I recall.”

“Fuck you, Old Man.”

I glanced warily at Asha. If she'd been serious about the offer she'd made, then it was no wonder she looked unaccountably smug. Given everything that Abby had told me… “Abby, if she knows where that carpet is–”

“She doesn't know jack or shit,” Abby snapped. I flinched back. “And even if she did, fuck her if I'm going to let her use that to get out of this. I'll find it some other way.”

Shoving her way past La Reina and Sadakat, past the tape-and-chalk circle, Abby grabbed Asha by the back of the neck and slammed her to the ground. “Here's how it's going to be. You are going to sign La Reina's fucking contract, or I am going to wring your goddamned neck and nobody is going to care.”

I hesitated on the edge of the ritual markings, appalled and helpless to do anything. “Abby, stop.”

“Stay out of this.” Abby pressed her knee into Asha's back, grinding her cheek into the trampled ground. “You will sign that contract. Got it?”

Asha clawed behind her head at Abby's forearms, eyes wide and white, feet kicking against the pavement. “Got it,” she croaked.

Abby released her neck, but only to grab her braid at its base. She held Asha like a recalcitrant dog and shoved the feather into her hands. Hesitantly, Sadakat unrolled a thick length of golden parchment. Asha didn't even read it – how could she, with Abby jerking her head about by the braid? My niggling unease blossomed into full-fledged nausea as I watched Asha scrawl her name with the golden feather and did nothing to stop it.

“There. It's done. She's ours until this is finished.” Abby shoved Asha to one side and stalked past the three of us to the stairwell. “I'll have Fuller round up the crew to start the cleanup.”

Several moments passed in quiet and stillness. La Reina and Sadakat watched the stairwell where Abby had disappeared. Asha sat in the center of the circle, head bowed, hands clasped to the back of her neck. A distant siren from somewhere outside the park broke our tableau. La Reina kicked the tape line, breaking it. Sadakat retrieved the fallen feather and rolled up the signed contract. Asha stood and sauntered out of the broken circle with a dignity that seemed as fragile as a soap bubble. Unnoticed, perhaps forgotten, by the others, I backed into the shadows behind one of the extinguished floodlights. The discomfort raised by the presence of shadow creatures was nothing to the sickness I felt now as I considered the full extent of the violence I'd just witnessed and the violation I'd just participated in.

I
escaped
the Academy while everyone else was still busy with Asha. I spent several hours wandering Golden Gate Park, past the rose gardens and the tea gardens and the botanical gardens before meandering up to the bison paddock. I came out the other end between two of the windmills and turned north. The Pacific Ocean was a night-dark shadow to my left: all sound and darkness. I wandered past the ruins of the Sutro Baths and along the cliff leading to Land's End. The taffy-twisted boughs of California cypress supported evergreen thunderheads. Fog drifted through the tree breaks in sheets unwinding, dampening the city noise and traffic. The only sounds here were the rush and flow of the ocean and the lowing of a foghorn. Sometimes, I have difficulty telling the difference between the real world landscapes and the sorts of strange places you can stumble across in the Shadow Realms.

I meandered until I reached the shelf that held the rocky remnants of the Land's End Labyrinth. I'd been so disappointed the first time I'd come here with my grandfather. I'd been expecting David Bowie levels of awesome, not an ankle-high rock spiral covering an area no bigger than my local Starbucks.

It was just what I needed now, though. I paced the maze like a mandala, going over each step of my fall. My actions had all seemed so reasonable in the moment. I saw a chance to see my son, so I accepted Argent's invitation to the exhibit, all the while knowing that they weren't the friendly face they showed to the world. The shadows attacked a public place, and I thought, who better than Mr Mystic to investigate and assist? Abby needed my help, and didn't I owe her for… what? Shooting me? Not selling out my true identity to Argent? Each time I hit an obstacle, I took it as my cue to try harder rather than a hint that I might want to consider whether I should be trying at all. Going to Lung Di should have been a glaring red flag that I was straying far afield, but it had proved so very effective.

Idealism is just a series of compromises waiting to happen
, he'd told me in Shanghai. I thought again of Asha's fear as Abby pinned her to the ground – a trapped woman. Afraid. Violently forced into a magically binding contract for no better reason than that her skillset was necessary. The justification that she'd deserved it for being in the wrong place at the wrong time made me ill all over again. I'd done that. I'd forced her into compliance, as surely as Abby, La Reina, or Sadakat. The road to hell looked remarkably like the past few weeks.

I found my way to the center of the labyrinth and sat on the rocky ground, not caring about the damage to my trousers. I rolled a pebble under my fingers and told myself that my clammy skin and shivers were due to the drifting fog and not my own self-disgust. I listened to the rumble of the surf at the bottom of the cliff, when I could hear it over the rush of blood through my head.

When the ground beneath me shifted, I assumed at first it was the product of a truck passing by. Until I recalled that I was easily a half mile from any road big enough for a truck. And then the shifting increased, a staggered back and forth strong enough that it would have knocked me over if I hadn't been sitting.

I don't know what self-destructive instinct prompted me to look across the veil when I should have been scrambling to find more solid ground than an erosion-prone ocean cliffside. But look I did and immediately regretted it.

If the Shadow Realms are an ever-present nightmare lurking just behind corners and under overhangs, the Voidlands are a place of mind-twisting wrongness. That's what lay just across the fog-thin veil. The Voidlands pressed against the veil, against the land on both sides, powerful as a tidal wave, insidious as an invasive root system. It was the cause of the earthquake, seeping into the cracks of the real world and thrusting them apart like some eldritch horror version of frakking. From somewhere far off – I couldn't be sure if it was in the Shadow Realms or the real world – came the creaking groan of shifting metal. I glanced north, where the Golden Gate loomed in a dizzying double image. In the real world, the span was shrouded in thick fog, only the rust-red towers visible above it. In the shifting border between the Voidlands and the Shadow Realms, the bridge burned the mottled, murky gold of its namesake. Black splotches broke off from the leading edge of the Voidlands and attached themselves to the cables and towers, seeming to consume the bridge, to overwhelm it. And then a light shone from somewhere further east, siphoning off the darkness. The bridge flared bright enough to burn my eyes, bright as La Reina's wings. The void splotches seared away, leaving only wispy smoke behind. The Voidlands retreated out to sea, and I was left looking into the Shadow Realms once more. They seemed almost friendly in comparison.

I rubbed my face. Forced my senses to focus on the real world. The earthquake had passed. I wasn't certain how long it had lasted, how bad it had been. I had to get home, check on Shimizu, find Mei Shen. I'd been so busy faffing around with Argent that I'd ignored her warnings about pending disaster. I hadn't bothered to follow up on my puzzlement as to why the Conclave would want Argent's tech in the first place, or what Lung Di's protections had been protecting us from.

I stumbled to my feet, turned about, trying to figure out how to retrace my steps to the entrance of the labyrinth. I'd been so focused on getting to the center that I hadn't paid attention to where I was going or how to get out. I stood a long time, irritated at the metaphor for being too on-the-nose.

“Fuck this,” I muttered, pulling out my cell phone and tramping a straight line across the furrows until I reached the edge.

Jack was kind enough to pick me up at the Legion of Honor parking lot, and even kinder not to mention the early morning hour. The earthquake had woken him, though it wasn't nearly as bad as it had seemed – low fours, that was all. That was enough to unnerve me. Foreshocks. We'd had three of them that I knew of. How much worse would they get?

Jack took me to his place and fed me pancakes, loaned me a Giants t-shirt and green froggy flannel bottoms. He merely nodded when I told him that Mr Mystic was going to ground for a while, and that he should refuse all requests for contact.

“Missy,” he said softly as I was climbing out the window and onto his roof. “Just… don't run away again.”

I gave him a tired smile. It did seem like running away was becoming a pattern with me. “I'm not running away. Only a bit of a regroup.”

“In that case, just remember you have friends.”

F
riends
. I surrounded myself with them over the next several days. Shimizu came back from Sheila's couch, though she threatened to make it a pit stop on her way back to Iowa when I told her the earthquake thing might be a developing issue leading to the Big One. At least I could assure her that Lung Di's Shadownomicon was locked away in the garage and sigil-warded to a fare-thee-well until I could figure out how to return it.

Shimizu's departure should have been another hint that I was losing the plot. I buried myself in mundanity and minutiae as I struggled to regain my bearings. I read Patrick's most recent chapter draft for his dissertation, went to a Bawdy Tales night with Vess and Andrew, helped Mason and Luis price wedding venues, and put in double hours on our house maintenance day because I'd skipped the last one for superhero stuff. I visited the bridge and even took a peek across the veil while I was there, but the Voidlands seemed to have been burned back to a sullen roiling far off the coast.

At my instruction, Jack forwarded the warding sigils and my polite regrets to Sadakat. He informed me that, after a few calls, things went silent on Argent's end. I didn't hear from Abby on either my cell or Mystic's burner.

“I know you're shaken up by what went down at the Academy, but you can't keep not-doing anything,” Johnny said during our Friday afternoon one-on-one. He'd taken me down for the third time with the same leg sweep, and I still hadn't worked out how to anticipate it or block it. There had to be a way, I knew. Johnny didn't hammer home an attack unless I already had the tools to counter it.

“I know,” I said, kipping up to my feet. “But I'm not going to keep flailing blindly. I need to figure out the right action before I start acting.”

We bowed and settled into stance. It was my turn to attack. I led with a series of quick feints. Johnny danced back, caught my foot when I tried to follow up with a front kick. I relaxed and pivoted with the movement's flow when he twisted my leg. He lost his grip and I rolled to my feet–

– And went down again from that same leg sweep.

“You should consider doing that on the mat as well.” Johnny reached down a hand to help me up. I took it, but then knelt rather than standing for another round of Rock 'Em, Sock 'Em Missy.

I closed my eyes, running through each time Johnny had taken me down. Johnny knelt across from me, giving me time to work it out.

Sort of. I had the chattiest sifu known to man. “Why did you start helping Argent in the first place?” he asked

I shrugged, and then followed the movement into rolling my shoulders. I was so damned tight these days. Maybe I could wheedle a massage out of Vess when I got home. “It was a shadow attack, and shadow's my thing. I saw a nail, and I was all ‘I have a hammer! I have a hammer!'” I paused, glaring at his poorly contained smirk. “And no, the hammer is not my penis. Asshole.”

“Hey, it was your metaphor.” Johnny nudged my knee when I continued to glare at him. “C'mon. Grab your shoes. Let's walk.”

I swapped my taiji slippers for my boots, pulled my coat on over my workout clothes, and followed Johnny down to the street.

“Is there actually a problem other than your desire to be a solution?” Johnny asked once we'd turned onto Grant. He nodded at the door hawkers outside the emporiums and received respectful bows in return. The sidewalks were fairly crowded – not even the events of the past six months could put much of a damper on tourist traffic on a sunny Friday afternoon in June – but the
laowai
tourists shied away from the overeager door shills. The crowds were here to gawk, not engage. Certainly not to be tricked into buying cheap trinkets. The tourists wanted authenticity. The shopkeepers wanted to make rent. Observing the disconnect made me twitchy; I was neither fish nor fowl. This was why I usually took back ways to the
kwoon
. Why had Johnny wanted to come out into this?

I stamped my feet as Johnny and I got caught behind cluster after cluster of amblers. Johnny shot me an amused look and wove through the crowds like magic. Probably was magic. Become a Chinatown Guardian; never get caught in foot traffic again. There were worse job perks. Too bad I wasn't descended from dragons.

I caught up with him further down the block, dodging a girl and her pet chow. At least it had given me time to consider his question. “The Voidlands seem to be encroaching. Which seems to be causing earthquakes. I'd say that's two pretty big problems. And recent, which means they're probably related to Lung Di's defenses falling apart, which is what Mei Shen was trying to warn me about. The Conclave is staging coordinated attacks on our world, that's… four? And I guess five would be: why? Who are they working with, what do they want, and why?”

“Any of that have much to do with Argent?” Johnny had led us down the hill to the Dragon Gate. The grey day dulled the gleam of the two guardian dragons topping the gate and the cinnabar pearl between them. A host of sparrows burst out from under the verdigris eaves, chased off by a larger feathered intruder. Tourists clustered around the weathered grey columns with their phones and selfie sticks and the occasional serious semi-pro kit. Someone had set their toddler atop the head of one of the guardian lions, which was causing a bit of a backup among the people waiting to take pictures. Despite her parents yelling at her, the crying child refused to make an acceptable face for posterity. I resisted the urge to lift the child down and tell the parents off. Everything I saw these past few days seemed like another reminder that it wasn't always my place to intervene.

“The sigils at the Academy were most likely placed by someone inside Argent. And someone with high clearance has to be feeding the Conclave intel on Argent bases, but mostly… no. I got so caught up in their stolen tech and its recovery that I forgot that was their priority, not mine. What are we doing here?”

“Teaching moment. You'll see.” Johnny leaned up against one of the supporting columns on the backside of the gate where fewer photographers were jockeying for a good angle. Something snapped, a building tension in the air that I hadn't even noticed, releasing energy like the breaking of a rubber band. The tightness in my shoulders drained away, leaving me loose and limp. I glanced over at the other three columns. The girl with the chow was letting her dog sniff one of them. At another stood an old man with a bright green snake coiled under his collar and down his arm like a scarf. I was pretty sure if I scanned the eaves, I'd spot the red-tailed hawk that had chased away the sparrows. Johnny wasn't the only Guardian of Chinatown, but I'd never noticed the others out and about. I nodded at the snake and wasn't sure if the tongue flick that followed was meant as
hello
or
piss off
.

Someone took the toddler down and gave her a ring-pop for being such a good girl. The irritated crowd drifted away once they'd gotten their shots, replaced by new groups who were content to make goofball faces at their cameras.

I hurried to follow Johnny back the way we'd come. The crowds going up the hill were thinner. People were being lured into the shops. Chatting. Laughing.

Well shit. “What the hell was that?”

“Chi realignment. People living here. People coming here. They're all here for different reasons. Usually things flow and it all works out. Sometimes the system gets gunked up and needs a bit of a tune-up.” Johnny flicked my ear. “Or did you think I was just around here to kick ass and take names?”