Chapter Sixteen. Homecoming #2
She had never felt more powerful than here, bared, offering her blood and a god to a believer.
She was used to taking, and inflicting. She had always understood winning as who could walk away possessing more.
But here she realized in a remaking way that the capacity to give could be the ultimate leverage; that being taken from, too, could be a power, if it was something the other person wanted enough to follow that desire past their own senses.
Tian was all fire and steel, and the way she was looking at Adeline—finally, wanting, and finally, furious—was more than anything Adeline had ever felt.
Tian’s hand curled around her offered wrist. She had to feel Adeline’s pulse hammering, evidence of the essence they’d done all this fighting over. Tian hesitated. Then, as her other hand moved, there was a splitting bang.
Adeline jumped as liquid sprayed. Her scrambling thoughts, only just now sputtering back to life, took too long to recognize the sound. By the time she realized it was a gunshot, Tian had looked down, found the blood pouring from her side, and crumpled to her knees.
Behind her stood a man with a gun. He looked shocked, as though he hadn’t expected to find Tian in the way. But quickly, he swung the pistol at Adeline.
“You! Come with me.”
She was frozen. Still pointing the gun at her, he marched around Tian, aiming to grab Adeline by the arm. Which was speckled with Tian’s blood, she realized. That had been the spray.
Wildness flared in her. Without exactly thinking, she threw up a fistful of fire, and instinctively the man’s eyes darted to the flame.
As his gun wavered, Adeline’s other hand latched onto his and flared with a spurt of orange.
He screamed. The gun dropped and went off at their feet, hitting the far wall with a splinter of blackened plaster.
Adeline registered a square cowl and an old broken nose as his fist swung wildly. She was only semi-conscious of catching his arm as it swung past, and of closing a grip around his throat as a bright flash went through her. White hot heat. Her vision fracturing into a hundred tiles.
Something surging through her and coming to a slamming halt at her skin.
The man let out a guttural cry that rippled against her palm. Adeline wrapped her hands tighter, felt his skin heating and blistering beneath them. “Why did you come here?” she demanded. “Tell me!”
“Going—to give you—to Fan Ge,” the man rasped. “Spare—my life.”
“Who the hell are you?” But his eyes had rolled back, and she sprang away as he dropped like a stone.
There was silence. Then Tian croaked, “Adeline.”
Adeline came to her senses. She spun, dropping to the floor herself to press a hand against Tian’s side.
Tian was still breathing, which seemed like a good sign, but Adeline could feel the ruptured flesh under the soaked shirt, expanding and contracting with every shuddering breath.
“You—” Tian swallowed, a movement that prompted a fresh spurt of hot blood. “You were—”
“Shut up.” Adeline fought a losing battle with her own panic; she ripped free a dress from the closet that was only half burnt and bunched it up against the bullet wound like she’d seen in the movies, but she didn’t know what else to do.
She couldn’t get back to the shophouse. The nearest phone was at a neighbor’s house.
“Fuck.” Tian’s breath was coming a little shorter now. She grabbed Adeline’s hand, their fingers both slick. “That hurts.”
“Tell me what to do.” The dress was soaking through now. She pressed harder, desperately, shoving away Tian’s attempts to make her ease up. “Some magic, or—”
“This isn’t the bleeding you had in mind?”
“Shut up.” Adeline scrabbled in her pocket and along the floor hopelessly, knowing there wasn’t anything in there but trying anyway. Tian’s eyes shut. When it stretched a moment too long Adeline dug her nails into her arm.
“Wake up!”
“Sorry.” Tian swallowed, shook her head, and grimaced. “I need you to burn this wound.”
“What?”
“To close it. I think it hit something important. I don’t know how long they’re going to take.”
“They? Who’s they?”
“Adeline—” Shudder. “Will you please burn this fucking hole so I don’t die.” With effort, Tian pushed away the bloody dress and tugged up the side of her shirt. Adeline flinched at the sight of the wound just under Tian’s ribs. The torn flesh gaped with every ragged breath.
“I’ve never—” She didn’t know the Hokkien word for cauterize. “I’ll run next door and call an ambulance. This—”
Tian pressed something into her hand. Her pocketknife, the one Adeline had earlier been demanding. “No hospitals. Too many questions. Call the Butterflies, get the Needles. I just need time.”
Adeline took the knife, shivering despite the thickness of the air, and lit her other hand. The sliver of metal glinted with the new light. Slowly she brought the two together and watched as the blade began to glow.
She had seen fire come up on metal bins before.
She was familiar with the way gold seeped into it, as though it were coming alive.
But the bright knife edge was wicked. She was seized by the urge to plunge it into herself.
That might have been easier. But instead she clenched her jaw, squeezed the handle, and pressed it against Tian’s skin.
Tian screamed. Adeline’s blood ran cold.
“Again,” Tian seethed. So Adeline brought the knife down again, and she heard it sizzle.
The smell.
Adeline dropped the knife, bile rising up her throat. What was left before her was blistered skin in the imprint of a blade—and a bloodstream that had slowed to drops. Was that enough?
Tian had passed out.
Adeline scrambled to her feet and ran. Her knees had blood on them and she scrubbed at it with rags and dirt.
As she reached the neighbor’s door she slowed, faked a limp, story consolidating.
The lights were on. She wondered if they’d heard the gunshots, or if they even knew what one sounded like.
She rang the doorbell anyway. Her heart pounded there in the darkness as she waited, hammering sensations out of order.
The smell of burning flesh. The flash of fire that had overcome her.
She was thrown in warm light as the door opened. The neighbor, Mr. Sim or Seet or something, gaped at her. “You’re…” He couldn’t remember her well, either.
She widened her eyes, which were wet with not entirely unreal tears.
“Can I please use your telephone? I was cycling home, but I crashed and skinned my knees.” If he looked too closely he’d see there were no cuts under the blood, but she’d smeared dirt all over it, and she was banking on the fact that he wouldn’t.
“Oh goodness—we have a first aid kit, I can drive you home.”
“That’s okay,” she said quickly. “I’m—I really just need a phone, please. Please,” she added.
He looked dubious, but she said please again, and he seemed to decide she was at least old enough to make her own decisions.
He led her through the living room, where he was watching some staticky Cantonese drama on the TV, and let her use the phone.
He watched her as she dialed, tweaking with the antennas until the image of the wailing woman sharpened again.
Vera picked up the phone, and it took all Adeline’s composure to ask for Christina.
By the time she had Christina on the line, she was clutching the phone into her cheek as she spoke.
“Christina. I was on my way home to my mother, but I had an accident. I’m okay. The … bicycle isn’t. Please come help.”
“Adeline? Bicycle—is Tian with you? What happened?”
“Christina.” She couldn’t even make enough sense of it to explain. Thought she might lose it if she had to say more. “Please.”
“How bad is it?”
“I don’t know if it’s going to make it.”
Christina swore. “Twenty minutes.”
Mr. Sim-or-Seet watched her gravely as she put the phone back in its cradle. “How did you get into an accident like that?”
Adeline had to take a deep breath. “Someone set off a firecracker,” she said, forcing her voice level. “Firecrackers. Didn’t you hear them?”
“Oh, is that what that was? It’s not even the first one this week. People have been setting them off ever since the ban. Kids being nuisances.” He frowned. “Are you sure you’ll be okay? You want to wait here?”
“No, thank you. I should get back to my bicycle. In case it gets stolen.”
“No thieves around here. It’s a safe area.” But he let her go anyway, more interested in his serial now that she clearly wasn’t in much danger.
Adeline fled back into the ruined house. Tian was still unconscious. Across the room, the stranger was also still alive, but every breath that came past his lips sounded like a dying rattle. His throat and arms where she’d touched him were red and taut and shining.
Adeline ran to him and picked up his arms, rolled his legs, looking for what must be there, must be somewhere.
When his limbs yielded nothing, she ripped his shirt open, and yes—hidden right on his chest was a large tattoo, not white steel like she’d expected, but two curving horns and two curving knives.
Adeline didn’t recognize it. It was an answer and more questions.
She tried to find reason, but every time she even grasped at a thought, the sight of Tian sitting in her own blood shattered all logic again.
For what seemed like hours, Adeline watched Tian breathe, terrified that each would be the last. By the time a car arrived downstairs, Adeline was clinging to the edge of her senses and her own bloodied arms. The engine cut out. Footsteps pounded up the creaking stairs.
A fast-moving halo of flame brought Pek Mun to the door, where her eyes fell directly on Tian.
She marionetted across the floor, cut limbs tripping and tangling over the space of a couple meters, falling to unstrung knees by Tian’s side even as her hands batted and pushed, finding Tian’s wounds.
Christina’s voice chased her: “Mun, move aside. Ah Lang needs to see her—” Christina wrapped her arms around Pek Mun and hauled her backward as the Needle they’d arrived with set to his task, tattooed fingers moving over the cauterized wound.
Pek Mun seemed possessed by a hysterical stranger. She snarled at Christina and flung her friend off her, then got up, walked over to the man with the horn tattoos, and started kicking him in the face.
The first kick rebroke his nose. The third sent a tooth skittering into Adeline’s foot.
She and Christina could only watch. Then, right when it seemed she might kill him, Pek Mun staggered back and ran both her hands over her hair, each clutching a section like two braids.
She repeated the motion once more, her breathing slowing.
“Did he say anything to you?” Pek Mun asked, alarmingly calmly. Adeline jolted, realizing she was being spoken to.
Her mouth stumbled over a voice it had forgotten it had. “He said he was going to give me to Fan Ge. To spare his own life.”
“That’s the Roaring Oxen’s leader,” Christina said. “Fan Ge’s got a bounty on his head. Hasn’t he been on the run? What’s he doing here?”
“He regretted going on the run, and thought he could make up for it. Seems like we’re not the only ones curious about our dear Adeline. Where’s the nearest phone booth?” Pek Mun asked then, still in that tone of absolute placidness.
Adeline blinked. “One street over.”
Pek Mun smoothed out her hair one more time and marched out the door.