Wade and the Scorpion's Claw (13 page)

Someone barked a command, and the men charged—then immediately started collapsing in groans. Throwing stars showered down on them from above like a monsoon in Guam.

“Yes!” I crowed, then suddenly felt an ironlike grip on my forearm. It was Feng. His hand was like a winch, dragging me up to the lowest of the pagoda's three roofs even as he kept hurling stars at the men. They split apart, then tried to regroup. After I was safe on the landing reshouldering my bag, which had slipped down my arm, he reached for Darrell and swung him up with ease. We rushed around to the far corner of the sloping roof, away from the Warriors.

“We ascend one more roof to another entry inside,” Feng whispered, digging his hands into his pockets for more stars.

Darrell and I were safely out of range when there came a single gunshot from the direction of Wolff's men. After the delicate tinkling of metal stars, it sounded like an explosion, smashing into the pagoda tiles behind us. Mr. Feng cried out; his pant leg was slashed and bloodied. He fell awkwardly and slid down the tiles, grasping wildly for something to hold on to. Wolff's bag slid from his shoulder and flew out away from him, as if it was going to tumble down into the street below.

I threw my bag off, flattened on the roof, and reached for him. But I only managed to snag the strap of his black satchel. I tried to hoist it back over my shoulder to free my hand, but the bag was heavy. I started to slip. “Darrell!”

I pedaled my feet on the slick roof tiles, desperate not to slip off. There was another muffled shot, and Mr. Feng howled in pain. I reached out as far I could, but he was sliding too fast.

“Help!” he cried. “Help!”

Darrell's grip was on me like a vise. I swung out with my free hand but managed only to graze Mr. Feng's fingertips.

The man dropped suddenly to the roof below, rolled once to the edge, and disappeared over the side.

I
yelled. I must have yelled. Air rushed from my throat, but all I heard was Feng's scream—a long fiery echo that drove into my ears like a hot dagger. Then it ended, and traffic, car horns, music roared like a waterfall. I tried to look over the side, but Darrell, braced flat on the lip of the roof, had his hands clamped on my wrist.

“Don't dangle, you dope!”

He reached behind him, took hold of a railing, and pulled me. I was able to swing my foot higher, then higher, until it caught the ledge, and he dragged me back onto the pagoda roof.

“Come on,” he growled. “We have to get out of here.”

I crawled after him through a small door in the center of the pagoda and slid down to the floor inside. Someone was blubbering. Maybe it was me? Yeah, definitely me. Darrell couldn't get a word in.

Besides the waterfall in my ears, I was actually wet. My shirt was once again soaked with sweat. Darrell clamped his arm tight around my shoulder and led me to the stairs. We stumbled down through the temple to street level. Dad and the others rushed over to us, but there wasn't time to talk. He took charge right away, drawing us into the alley again. Or was it a different alley? I wasn't sure. I just had to follow him. Becca was on one side of me, Darrell on the other. Dad and Lily led the way.

After a while, the open sky was above us. We were in a park, next to a tall building, and there were redwood trees all around. It was nearly completely dark by now. I wasn't sure how we'd gotten there, or if the star throwers had followed us. I was shivering with fear and cold.

“He's dead,” I said. “Feng Yi is dead. I couldn't hold on to him.”

“Wade, look at me,” my father said, his voice very calm and comforting. “Wade, listen. Maybe he's not dead. Maybe he . . . landed somehow. He's an acrobat, remember. And there would be sirens.”

And then there were sirens, winding closer on the crowded streets behind us. Still quaking, I focused on Dad's face. It was growing very dark behind him, like the sun had set all over again. Dark as night, like the cave at the end of my dream. Then his face was dark, too.

Then I passed out.

I woke up two or three minutes later. We were in the same park as before, only this time I was lying on the ground under one of the thick-trunked trees. Dad, Darrell, Becca, and Lily were all around me, like that scene in
The Wizard of Oz
where Dorothy wakes up and realizes it was all a dream.

Except it wasn't.

“You went out like a light,” Darrell said. “
Click.
First you were there; then you weren't. I thought you died. We all thought you died. But you didn't, because you opened your eyes just now, which is a good sign. I'm just saying. If you think you're dead, you aren't.”

“Darrell,” Dad said. “Give him some space.”

I breathed in. Lily pulled a plastic water bottle out of her bag and held it in front of my face. I sat up, leaned against the tree, and drank until I couldn't anymore.

Becca sat on a stone bench facing me, but she kept glancing nervously over her shoulder. She wore a crazy scared sort of . . . what? Smile? Maybe because I was still alive, or maybe because she was in shock, like me, and couldn't make her face do any other expression.

My fingers were sore. I realized they were still clenched tightly around the straps of Markus Wolff's black satchel, while Darrell had snagged mine from the pagoda roof. Lily slipped the satchel off my arm and set it on the bench next to Becca.

“Where are we?” I asked.

“A place called Bierman Park,” Dad said. “I remembered it from when Sara and I were here. We're out of Chinatown, a few blocks from the restaurant, not far from the bay. I thought we might want to be in a public place. But I don't know how long we can stay here before they find us again.”

“That's okay, because we have to get to the tower,” I said, sitting up. “Just as soon as my head stops pounding.”

Darrell gave me a hard look, then stood up, looking toward the water. “Mine is pounding, too. Not because I nearly died but because I forgot to thank my brother for saving my life.”

“Oh, sorry,” I said. “Thanks.”

“Don't mention it,” he said. Then he breathed out. “Listen. Does anybody feel weird about Tricia Powell? I mean, I kind of trusted her. Why would she lie about the Chinese symbol of the beacon tower? Lily, can you try to look it up with those magic fingers of yours?”

She smiled. “Of course.”

“What would we do without you, Lily?” my dad said as her thumbs flew over the little keyboard on her phone.

“I don't want to say,” she said, swiping the screen at whatever results she was getting. “But it probably involves a lot of blank looks.”

I sat there, my arms and legs completely wasted, but more and more my brain was starting up again. It winked and snapped at me. Beacon tower. Feng Yi versus Tricia Powell. Who was lying to us?

Then Lily found something. “And this is why I get paid the big bucks. Or I will when I get a job. ‘Tower with beacon' or ‘beacon tower' is
not
just one character. It's three. See?”

She enlarged the image.

Not one of them looked anything like the symbol inside the spice box.

“Mr. Feng really studied the symbol,” said Becca. “I watched his eyes, the way he traced it in the air in front of him. So he was trying to deceive us?”

“We don't know that,” my dad said softly, almost tentatively, as if he might not believe what he'd just said. “He rescued us twice. Why would he lie if he's a Guardian?”

“Is there some way he could not be dead?” Darrell asked.

“But how could he not be?” I said. “I let him fall.”

“You didn't
let
him fall,” my dad said, correcting me.

“Dead or not,” said Lily, “I think Feng Yi knew exactly what it meant. Maybe he told us ‘tower with beacon' to throw us off? He didn't want us to keep going, remember. He said we were involved in something too big for us.”

“Wolff said that, too,” I said, remembering the Honolulu airport.

“Let's not get ahead of ourselves,” my dad said. “One thing is certain. If Mr. Feng turns out
not
to be a Guardian, and if he's still alive, he might now know something we don't. The real meaning of the symbol.”

“Which I stupidly showed him,” said Becca.

“Not at all,” Dad reassured her. “Showing him the symbol has just told us that he may not be someone to trust.”

“We do still have the poem,” said Becca. “Luckily, I didn't give that away. Wade, you have the translation in your notebook. Maybe we should read it again.”

A group of men in dark jackets suddenly walked by. We all froze for a moment, thinking they were more of Wolff's men coming to finish the job. But they kept on walking. One of them told a joke. The others laughed, and they trotted past. Right. Other people were still leading normal lives, having regular conversations, going out for dinner. Sometimes you forget that.

My dad got to his feet and slung the black satchel over his shoulder. “You know, I'm not sure sitting out in the open is the best idea after all. Wade, are you okay to walk?”

“Yeah, fine,” I said.

“Then let's keep moving,” he said, “while we think.”

The sky was clear, and stars were visible above the trees in the park, like pinpricks of light against the black. Dad didn't know the city too well, so we wandered a bit before we came to the streets running along San Francisco Bay.

There were large warehouses every few blocks jutting out into the water. You could see (and smell) that most of them were still working warehouses and part of the fishing industry.

“This is a main avenue called the Embarcadero,” he said. “Let's follow it north for a bit. Wade, if you can't read the poem . . .”

“I can do it.” I took out the notebook and flipped through the pages until I found it.

No one said anything while a crowd of tourists walked past us, chatting loudly; then Darrell cleared his throat. “Well. We get the first two lines, right? The Scorpio relic was in the box. But the rest of it is about who the Guardian is. And I have to say, the last two lines seem like he's dead, which is not good news.”

“Maybe.” Lily lifted her phone as if she was going to check it, but she didn't. “Let's forget the last two lines for a second. ‘Masked of face' sounds like the Guardian has a mask. But you'd notice some guy going around with a mask, and he'd probably be locked up, so maybe it's not a real mask but more like a disguise. And he's sinister and dangerous. Who do we know like that?”

“Who
don't
we know like that?” I said.

“Right, everyone has been sinister so far, including Feng Yi,” said Becca.

Darrell stopped suddenly on the sidewalk, and stayed there until we turned back to him. He was grinning. “Uh, no. The poem doesn't say ‘sinister'; it says ‘sinister of hand.'”

“So he's holding a gun,” I said. “Or maybe . . . a throwing star?”

“So maybe the Guardian
is
Mr. Feng,” said Lily.

Still grinning, Darrell shook his head. “Not what I meant.”

“Good one, Darrell,” said Dad, sharing the smile now. “You figured out that part. The poem writer knows that
sinister
comes from Latin, and it means ‘left.' The poem means that the Guardian is left-handed.”

“Mr. Chen!” said Becca. “His left hand was the one that . . . the one . . . that . . . you know . . . is missing!”

Looking at Becca made me think of the diary. “Wasn't Andreas left-handed? The diary says so, right? Becca, it's in your translation.”

Lily reached into Becca's bag and handed her the notebook. Becca opened it and skimmed a few pages. “Here it is. When Andreas is on the island, Hans says, ‘His left hand, with which he is most adept, is black.'” She looked at me, and her eyes shone like stars under the streetlight. She knew what I knew: the puzzle pieces—some of them—were starting to fit.

“So,” Lily began, “we're saying that there's some kind of tradition, from Andreas on down, for the Guardians, the
true
Guardians of Scorpio, to be left-handed. That it's all left hands from the very beginning of the relic.”

“Mr. Feng isn't left-handed,” I said. “The way he tossed throwing stars. The way he reached for me from the pagoda roof.”