Girl Goes To Wudang (An Emily Kane Adventure Book 7) Read online

  “Please don’t take offense, Michiko,” she said, “but Japanese food is very salty.”

  “Don’t worry, Fan Xiao. I think it’s salty, too, especially the fish roe.” She pointed at a small pile of translucent golden orbs corralled by a single sheet of seaweed paper. “… and, please, call me Em. All my friends do.”

  “Thank you, Em… and my friends call me Xiao Xiao.”

  Zhizheng turned out to be right about Emily’s outfit – no bouncer batted an eye when they cut through the rope lines at the first club, though this undoubtedly had more to do with her company than anything she was wearing. Eventually they made it to all the clubs along Stadium Road, at least all the ones Zhizheng preferred. They danced for hours, it seemed, sometimes in pairs, or all together, and Emily found herself staring at Fan Xiao more than once – at her long legs and slender torso, and straight black hair that hung down her back until she shook it like a mane. The deep black pools of her eyes. One club featured Korean pop, and the thunderous bass-line pulled everyone into a continuous mass, swaying and grinding against each other with arms waving overhead.

  Fan Xiao turned out to be exuberant and friendly, much less reserved than the party girl Emily originally took her to be, and dancing with her in the last club, which mainly featured western pop and disco music, was a new source of pleasure. When they touched, she found the softness of her body a revelation, long and lean, like Emily’s, but less muscular, less dense… as if the girl were made of air, or silk.

  “Zhi Zhi has been so kind to me… I hope you don’t mind.”

  “Oh, don’t worry, Em. Zhi Zhi and I are just friends.”

  Emily considered the turn of Fan Xiao’s eyes as she said this, as though an unspoken understanding had been shared, even though she had no idea what it was. “How long have you known him?”

  “We’ve been friends since childhood. At one point, I think, our mothers had begun to make plans… until his father passed away.”

  Emily glanced across the dance floor, where Wu Dao and Zhizheng were engaged in an animated discussion with a few other very smartly dressed young men. The music thundered along, a single four-four bass line that different melodies seemed to float on top of. Lyrics in English spoke of love and sorrow, joy and celebration, defiance and reconciliation, and Emily tried to hear them as a Chinese listener might, without letting her mind recognize all the cultural cues and markers, the words functioning merely as ornament and arabesque, expressing merely generic sentiments.

  “What do they argue about,” she said, half out loud.

  “You know how boys are.”

  “I hope it’s not politics.”

  “I hardly think they care enough about politics to get in an argument. I imagine it’s likely to be about a novel, or some romantic episode in history. They’re aesthetes, not radicals.”

  “Do you know who those men are? I noticed them in the last two clubs, too, and they aren’t dancing.”

  Fan Xiao smiled at Emily, her bright eyes glistening in the flashing light reflecting off the mirrored ball that revolved slowly over the dance floor. “If I had to guess, I’d say they were either Wu Wei’s security people… or Interior Ministry officers. It’s okay… it’s all perfectly normal.”

  “How is being shadowed by ministry officers normal?” Emily was stunned by the calm Fan Xiao exuded, even as she speculated on the likelihood they were under surveillance. Years of attempting to avoid surveillance – probably unsuccessfully – had ingrained habits, or scars, on her psyche. The dark grey suits sitting across the room were most worrisome because she hadn’t noticed them at the stadium, in that huge, empty parking lot where they should have been easy to spot. If there was more than one team…

  “His father is one of the wealthiest men in China, and he owns the largest defense contractor. You have to expect that they’re going to keep an eye on his son, for all sorts of reasons.”

  “… all sorts of reasons?”

  “Of course, which is why Wu Dao is constantly tweaking them. You’ve seen how he is, right? He can’t resist pushing buttons at home and in the Interior Ministry.”

  “What about me, Xiao Xiao? Am I just another tweak?”

  “Please forgive me, Em. I did not mean to offend.” Fan Xiao steadied herself with a hand on Emily’s shoulder. She’d been drinking continuously since the first club, but it didn’t keep her from recognizing that she should offer some comfort. “Just don’t fall in love, okay?”

  “What’s taking them so long?” An hour later, Wu Dao paced the curb outside, alternately waving his arms and slapping his legs.

  When they’d arrived two hours earlier, the cars caused a bit of a stir among the people on the long side of the rope line. But on the way out, the crowd was gone, and when Fan Xiao shivered in the night air, Zhizheng spread his jacket over her shoulders while they waited for the valet to bring up the cars. A black sedan, not foreign, not fancy, pulled up in front, followed by a work van, and before anyone had a chance to react, the van door slid open and three men piled out onto the sidewalk. Two more men emerged from the back of the sedan, waving clubs, and barking out taunts.

  “You think China belongs to you,” one said. “That ends tonight.”

  Zhizheng placed himself in front of Emily and Fan Xiao, and Wu Dao shoved one of the men back into the van. Fan Xiao shrieked and clutched at Emily’s hand.

  “We don’t want any trouble,” Zhizheng said.

  “Then you should have chosen your dates more carefully.”

  Wu Dao fell to the pavement, struck in the shoulder by a metal pipe, and two of the men kicked him repeatedly, and when Zhizheng tried to pull them away another man shoved him head-first into the side of the van. These were large, athletic men, dressed in black and wearing balaclavas, and Wu Dao and Zhizheng were no match for them.

  Fan Xiao cried out, “Zhi Zhi,” when one of the men raised a club to strike him as he lay on the ground. Strangely, the man found it impossible to swing the club for an instant, and turned to see Emily gripping the other end. He rose and jerked it free from her hand, and she took the opportunity to strike him in the throat, sending him stumbling back, gasping for air.

  The other men had her surrounded in an instant, four men armed with clubs and pipes, who quickly discovered the paradox of group combat – whoever attacks first risks being struck by a friendly weapon – and hesitated, while Emily sized them up, breathing slowly and turning her mind away from Fan Xiao’s cries. Once she’d found the quiet, another voice came to her, whispering in her ear, or in her heart:

  When he swings, step under and pull the wrist down, smash the knee, twist his wrist until the small bones fracture… let his screams distract the others, pivot behind and jab the club into the next man’s throat, pivot and slap another’s groin, twist an elbow until the shoulder pops… a sharp kick to the next man’s ear, and let the motion carry the club around to a face, the back of a head… smooth circles, always in motion, unperturbed by any obstacles, drawing energy and finding a new direction with each contact.

  How long did it take to play out the entire scene in her thoughts? A moment, long or short, it seemed to have no time, and the intensity of the vision brought the taste of stomach acids to the back of Emily’s throat. The pattern of movements snapped into focus for her, graceful and gruesome – it would end with all of them broken on the sidewalk, maimed, maybe dead. The voice went silent, and Fan Xiao’s shriek brought her mind to a new focus.

  The man on her left moved first, swinging for her head, but she’d already lunged a low fist at the groin of the man on her right, and he doubled over, unable to scream for the suddenness of the pain. She seized his club and used it to parry a second stroke from her left, and simultaneously struck a sharp knuckle into the soft spot above another man’s knee. His pain was sharp and intense, but at least he’d walk again. Another club swung past her face – she turned away to evade it and jabbed with her club to fracture the lowest rib on his exposed side, and wondered if she�
��d punctured a lung. As he turned away from the blow, she drove her fist into the soft spot just behind his ear, the force of her strike practically lifting her off the ground, and he crashed down onto one of the first pipe-bearers. She threw the club into the face of a man who had readied himself to lunge at her, and used the distraction to pivot into a spinning wheel kick that caught him on the ear, her heel compressing the mastoid process – had she broken his jaw? – and sent him crashing into the van. The momentum of the kick carried her around to the first man, the one she’d punched in the groin, who was struggling to his feet, still hunched over. He looked up, his head cocked to one side in time to see the bottom of her shoe crash into his cheekbone just below the eye socket. Emily stood over him, glowering and gesturing wordlessly toward the sliding door of the van, and he half-staggered, half-crawled into it.

  No one remained unbruised by her initial onslaught, and the only question was whether any of them cared to try their luck a second time. Two voices spoke in her heart, since she held every advantage over her assailants – complete their destruction or allow them the opportunity to withdraw, humbled, but more or less whole. The man who first swung a club at her, and who had perhaps gotten off easiest among his comrades, appeared to consider the possibility of renewing hostilities… at least until he saw the expression in her eyes. With a shiver, he cringed back and helped two broken comrades pick themselves up off the sidewalk and climb groaning into the back of the van.

  Emily felt her eyes burning as she cast her glance about, scanning the scene for other assailants, and noticed something else, that the minders from the ministry, or Wu Wei’s men, whoever they might be, were nowhere to be seen. It was a relief to confirm for herself that no one was dead – and to have avoided the inquiries that must follow such a result – and she reflected on that as she gestured to Fan Xiao to help tend to their friends. The girl had pressed herself up against a nearby wall, perhaps thinking to find some natural camouflage there, and now she crept closer to Zhizheng, at first placing a hand on his forehead, and then cradling his head in her arms. But before they could pull Wu Dao and Zhizheng away, another man emerged from the back of the sedan, larger than the others, and calmer, more menacing, and strangely familiar.

  Fan Xiao shrieked at the sight of him, and Emily stepped forward to block his path to her companions. He swung his fists at her, swift, controlled and forceful. His training in hand to hand combat was superior to the others, and his ferocity, too… this much was obvious. She blocked and dodged, leaning away from a roundhouse kick aimed at her face. More hand strikes followed, but none found their target, and she felt his frustration growing, even though she had yet to counter-attack. And she noticed the voice, whispering again in her ear, telling her what she could plainly see, that for all his strength and speed, and his formidable training, he didn’t quite know how to finish his techniques. His fury, his spirit came from the heart of a tiger, and it lacked the craft to know how to end a real fight.

  The walking wounded had somehow managed to organize themselves in the van, apparently unable to imagine challenging her again, and pulled away from the curb, one of them calling out to this new assailant to come with them, but the tiger did not even know how to run away, not against an opponent who had yet to strike him, no matter how elusive she proved to be. Emily felt another pair of eyes, watching from the shadows, and she turned to look for them. In passing, she caught a glimpse of Fan Xiao tending to Wu Dao and Zhizheng, and all three turned to watch her as if they were in shock, gripped by fear of some danger they thought she couldn’t see.

  The man with the tiger’s spirit saw his chance when she turned away and jabbed at the side of her head, ready to follow with an overhand right, and as many more strikes as he could fit in. If only the first one had landed… but Emily pivoted away, nudging his arm up once it had expended its energy, and seizing the wrist with her right hand. A quick pivot-step allowed her to sweep his leg, and as he fell backwards, a tug on the captive wrist twisted him around and drove his face into the pavement. Simple thumb pressure on the back of his contorted hand elicited a muffled howl of pain, and she pressed her knee into his back to complete his submission.

  “Don’t make me hurt you in a permanent way,” she whispered in his ear. A slight nudge and a twist brought a deep, hollow groan. “If I snap the elbow, you’ll be discharged from the army.”

  Even through the mask, she recognized fear and frustration in the eye she could see, but what did she expect him to say? How could he trust her now… and why should he? She was nothing to him, not a sister, not a friend, and that other set of eyes, wherever they were, he couldn’t show weakness in front of them.

  “Fine. Have it your way.” She released his hand and stepped away, knowing well enough that he wouldn’t be able to accept her generosity. But perhaps he’d accept a lesson. When he sprang at her from behind, the back kick caught him in the chest and he staggered back. After a moment, which she granted him to catch his breath, he lunged at her again, now completely frustrated and tilting out of control, seeking to tackle her, or merely to get his hands on her throat, but she parried his hand, pulling him over her hip as she pivoted and threw him across the hood of the sedan. The force of the impact crumpled the windshield and he found himself wedged backwards into the opening he’d created. Emily left him to sort himself out, and make whatever peace he had to with the other set of eyes that had seen everything.

  “C’mon guys,” she said to Fan Xiao and the others, who looked to be more or less able to walk under their own steam now, “Let’s go find the valet.”

  18

  Taking Her Leave

  For the next few nights, it was difficult to sleep. She hoped no rumor of an incident outside a nightclub would find its way to the embassy, and she worried about Zhizheng, who’d suffered a concussion and memory loss, at least briefly. Wu Dao’s ribs were bruised, but he’d escaped more or less undamaged, and had even been able to drive home, which was fortunate since Fan Xiao didn’t know how to drive Zhizheng’s sportscar, leaving Emily the task. A complicated shuttle system ensued, in which she followed him to the Fan estate, and then to Zhizheng’s mother’s house… and everyone ended up at the right destination, though Emily had to push Wu Dao back into his car when he tried to invite himself up to her apartment.

  A “Daoist” cold shower helped her shed the worst passions, the ones that had urged her to exact the most severe penalties from their assailants. The question recurred the whole ride home, were those men really “their” assailants, or just hers? She’d read about gangs of thugs attacking westerners who dated Chinese girls – there’d even been an incident a few weeks earlier. But their party hardly fit that description. She was the only westerner, and anyone would be hard pressed to pick her out of a crowd in this town, unless they noticed her awkward ‘Beijingese’.

  If she had identified of the voice speaking in her heart, and the last assailant really was Feng Hu, with Feng Tu no doubt watching from the shadows, why would they have wanted to attack Wu Dao and Zhizheng? If they had really meant to single her out, that would mean they’d discovered her role in the death of their brother. But who would have told them?

  She shivered off the last of the shower, toweled off and slipped under the covers. With the shades drawn, the streetlights from the corner threw a thin shaft into one corner of the ceiling, and she peeked at it with a sheet covering the lower half of her face. The wallpaper in that corner had a crinkle that bent the light ever so lightly into a chiaroscuro of Fan Xiao’s face in profile, or so it seemed to her sleepy eyes.

  The girl had opened up to her, contrary to expectations, and even offered almost sisterly advice: “Don’t fall in love.” Emily had taken it as a kindness at the time, though now she’d begun to direct a different sort of attention to what it might mean. Does she think I’m not good enough for Wu Dao… or not pretty enough? This last reflection stuck in the back of her throat, since she knew perfectly well that she was much too ugly to attract anyo
ne. Hadn’t Gyoshin Heiji confided this very thought to her, just before Emily let the katana slip between two vertebrae to separate her head from her shoulders?

  “We may not be pretty, you and I,” Gyoshin had said. “But at least we know better than to fear death.” Her face had been at peace when she uttered those words, and maybe they helped reconcile her to the inevitable death that awaited her at Emily’s hands.

  Had Fan Xiao seen the same thing, that she was too ugly to be loved, and that this was the price for allowing oneself to become the angel of death? The light flickered for an instant, as if the image on the ceiling winked at her, and she remembered Itbayat, where she’d gone on a killing spree just a few months ago, slashing and stabbing enough men to bathe in their blood, as if the fates sent them to her to be dispatched. “Isn’t there anyone else ugly enough for this work,” she’d wanted to scream at the time. Only the need for stealth had muffled this primal cry.

  The shade shifted slightly with an air current, perhaps a draft from the window sash, and the face shifted yet again. No longer Fan Xiao offering sisterly advice, but someone else, someone darker. Her bleached blonde hair fluttered in the cool Kamchatka breeze as she shrieked in rage at the impossible prospect that the clone she’d so carefully engineered could actually love Emily. No, this was not to be borne. She’d sooner see Ba We dead than lose him to this infuriating, upstart girl. Colonel Park glanced at her from the corner of the room, her hair stretching from floor to ceiling, and the gleam in her eye betrayed a settled hatred the like of which Emily had never seen before.

  Yes, she’d gladly kill Ba We before letting her have him, but when he sacrificed himself to protect her, Emily had stolen even this little pleasure from her. So confident of her tactical cleverness and her hand-to-hand skills just moments before, when Emily lunged at her Colonel Park fled into the nearest bunker, leaving the girl to mourn her savior. They both knew a confrontation was inescapable, and once again a life found its terminal point at Emily’s hands. Lying there, her body broken, unable to form words, her spirit seemed to speak to Emily through her eyes. What would she tell her? Thank you for setting me free. I was like a bird trapped in a room, and you have shown me the way out. Follow me… quick as you can.