"Did you now?" I backed away a few steps, taking in my surroundings it case it rushed me. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Will struggling with three of the goblins. One was on his back, trying to bite at his neck. I backed that way, careful to keep my body angled toward Nian.
"Yes. Except the child wasn"t here. I"ve waited a long while to meet him." The creature-Nian-shook itself like a wet dog. "Yet, now that he"s come, he"s no longer a child."
"Why is it speaking English?" Jamison squeaked.
The monster spared him a withering glance and said something in Chinese that made Jamison"s eyes pop open wide.
"Yeah, so I"m tired of the games. What do you want?" I asked as orange light flashed behind me. A whoop of excitement went up and goblins screamed. They must not be fireproof. "Because your friends are going down pretty fast."
"Your power," it said. "Your blood."
"Sorry," I told it. "I"m not giving that away today."
Nian stared at me through half-lidded eyes, and its back haunches tensed, like it was about to pounce. "I didn"t think it would be easy. But it"s worth the risk."
Will was down to one last goblin and edging toward us. From the sound of magazines slamming into rifles and Johnson"s rather dangerous humming of "How Do You Like Me Now," I gathered the team was at my back, ready to go, too. I just needed to keep the beast distracted long enough.
"Pretty big risk," I told it. "Why bother? What"s so special about me?"
It snorted and stamped a hoof, sounding more like a bull than a lion for a moment. "Don"t take me for a fool, Archer. We all know who you are, what you are. For someone like me, your lifeblood would feed me for an age."
I didn"t like the sound of that. "Then try to take it. Come on, I dare you."
At the taunt it roared, and Tink roared back inside my head. Before I knew what the plan was, she launched me at Nian"s head, knife out. I almost gouged out its eye, but it managed to duck at the last second. I sailed over its head, landed on its back and slid over the side.
I hit the ground on my bad leg. The pain took my breath away-long enough for Nian to turn and snap at me.
Will dodged between us and slashed the creature across its snout. It howled and b.u.t.ted him with its head. Will flew over me, landing hard and skidding another ten feet over rough ground before slamming into a tree trunk. Nian chuckled, and came at me again.
I rolled out of the way, struggling to pull in air. My only lucky break was the monster was too big to corner well-and I was quick.
Someone hosed Nian"s hind end with a flamethrower, but its hide seemed to be made of iron and all the heat did was p.i.s.s it off. It turned and charged at the team. Johnson leapt on top of the Jeep, Nguyen dove under it and Lanningham jumped into the driver"s seat as the creature pounded past them. Poor Jamison wasn"t as quick. Nian rammed its giant skull into his chest with an audible crunch, then flicked him away like a fly. Jamison sailed into the darkness outside of camp. There was a thump when he hit ground, and nothing more.
Will"s word, redshirt, echoed in my head and Tink"s fury fed mine. "Hey. You want me, not them. What are you waiting for?"
It turned once more and faced me. I stood my ground, a memory bubbling up out of nowhere. I gripped the knife with my right hand, bracing the heel of the handle with my left palm. Blade up, elbows turned out. Feet dug into the dirt.
Sometimes old ways were the best ways.
Nian charged, a frenzied red light in its eyes, but I didn"t flinch. Between one blink and the next, the creature became a Bear, running at a terrified fourteen-year-old boy in the Montana woods. Another blink and it was Nian again, almost on top of me.
I sidestepped the beast, sprang up and jammed my blade into its chest. Too big to stop on a dime, Nian continued forward even as I cut a line from its shoulder to its hip. The monster toppled over, shaking the ground beneath it, but it wasn"t dead-just nearly.
I walked over to kneel in front of its eye. "Is this what you came for?"
It blew a shallow breath out of its nostrils. "Yes."
Okay, that wasn"t what I thought it would say. "Yes? Really, you came to die?"
"I wanted ... " It shuddered and its eye closed. "To see if the legends were true. Our lord asked me to seek you out to gauge your power."
"Your lord? Who"s that?"
"A living flame who gives us life." It shuddered again. "He comes and you will burn."
Before I could ask any other questions, Nian let out a soft, rattling breath and died.
The creature of Fire, Tink answered. We"re on his trail.
"Technically, it sounds like he"s on ours," I said.
Semantics.
"Yeah, semantics." What mattered was that we"d identified the fourth point on Zenka"s star, Fire, and someone would likely burn. We had to find the shaman before the prime monster found us. Which led me to a difficult request.
"Captain Johnson?" I said.
"Yes?"
"I need someone to find my dad."
Chapter Twenty-One.
Kelly came out of Will"s tent, squinting in the early morning light. His face was pale but his stride was determined as he crossed camp. Although he wasn"t a big guy, I could tell the others respected him by the way they nodded as he pa.s.sed.
Unspoken rule: never diss the guy who might have to st.i.tch you up after a fight. Especially if he"s good at it. That had been true about Klimmett-who I missed, but he was on Ramirez"s team in Alaska-and I suspected I"d come to believe it about Kelly after a while.
I was sitting on an upturned crate while Blakeney cleaned debris out of the punctures on my calf. All the rolling and dodging had torn my bandages off, and bits of rocks and plant matter had ground into the open places. When Kelly made it over, Blakeney stood aside.
He held my leg out into the sunlight, peering into the teeth marks. "Looks good, considering. Sergeant did a good job."
"How"s Cruessan?" I asked, ma.s.saging my temples. Tink had tried to ease the withdrawal this time, or that"s what she said anyway. My pounding head couldn"t tell the difference.
"Bruised hip, punctures on his shoulder and right arm and a righteous case of road rash from sliding across the ground after being thrown, but he"ll live. He needs a day to recover from getting his bell rung, but nothing major enough to need to evac him."
"How about ... " I found I couldn"t say Jamison"s name. The scene was too fresh.
"We found him," Blakeney said quietly, and I noted how Kelly"s hands shook. They must"ve been friends. "The colonel will send someone to retrieve him and bring in more supplies." He flashed me a wry smile. "Nguyen asked for a shoulder mounted rocket launcher with anti-tank missiles. The terrain"s too tough for vehicles, so he wanted something with kick that he could carry."
"Well, Nian did say the Big Boss is after us. A few anti-tank missiles don"t sound like overkill to me." I winced as Kelly deadened my leg with lidocaine. "I"m guessing air support isn"t feasible?"
"The captain said not unless we pinpointed the location. With the forests, a fighter or an Apache can"t see what"s happening on the ground, especially since we"re on a slope in the mountains."
"Okay." I turned my head away from the needle going through my skin. I hated this part. No matter how many times-and it"d been a lot-I"d gotten st.i.tches, I was still grossed out by the idea that someone was sewing me back together.
A clamor of voices distracted me from the needle and thread. Lanningham led a group of Chinese soldiers through camp. As they pa.s.sed me, most bowed their heads in a show of respect before moving on. I wondered if I"d ever get used to it. I kind of hoped not; all those celebrities who started to believe their own press were a.s.sholes.
Lanningham took his visitors to the edge of the tree line and showed them Nian"s carca.s.s. It was too big for us to move, even just to create a funeral pyre. We"d asked them to bring in a helicopter to lift it out.
What none of us expected was their reaction.
A few of the men staggered backward, making signs to ward off evil. A few others started stamping their feet and yelling.
"What are they doing?" I said.
Blakeney shook his head. "No idea."
"I know what they"re doing," Kelly said, still bent over my leg. "Jamison and I were a.s.signed to this post because we both spent time here as kids and speak a couple of dialects of Chinese between us. I mean, we did." He sighed. "Anyway, the legend of Nian is that he"d attack villages at the new moon or at Chinese New Year until a wise old man figured out Nian was afraid of the color red and of loud, percussive noises."
That explained the stamping and yelling. "He"s dead, though."
"They might be worried he"ll come back to life." There was a tug on my leg. "There, last st.i.tch is knotted. Why don"t you go over there and help the lieutenant out?"
"Diplomacy isn"t in my skillset, but I"ll try." I took a few steps. "Good work on the leg. Thanks."
"Need to keep you two healthy," Kelly murmured.
A task that sounded like it might get harder by the day. I went over to our visitors. Most of them had recovered and were staring down at the beast with a little bit of wonder and a lot of revulsion.
"So it is true?" One man, the officer of the outfit, asked. "The legend is real?"
"Seemed pretty real last night when it was killing one of my men," I said.
"The government will want this to be kept secret," he told me. "We will remove it, but do not speak of it anywhere."
Who was I going to talk to, the press? And what did they think we were up to out here? "To avoid panic, or because it"ll look bad that a huge, legendary creature has been running amok on the mountain and n.o.body knew about it?"
All the Chinese soldiers glared at me.
"Archer, why don"t you go report in to the captain," Lanningham said, giving me a warning glare.
Starting an international incident was too easy sometimes. People needed to lighten up. "Sir, yes sir."
The captain was on the phone, and I didn"t want to bug him, so I crossed camp and went to Will"s tent instead. "Hey, hoser, you up?"
A groan. "Define "up.""
I ducked inside and Will rolled over on his cot to face me. "If you"re here to tell me this was only round one, I already know."
"No, I came in before I damaged US relations with China." I sat down on a cot across from him. From the perfectly straight blanket and the centered pillow, I guessed this was Nguyen"s bunk. "Sorry to bring havoc with me when I showed up."
"I"m used to it." Will gave me a half smile. "You"re a havoc magnet."
He had no idea. "Speaking of havoc, talked to Penn lately?"
That made him laugh "Got a text from her last night. Says they"re doing good, but bored at school."
"Ella said the same thing. After all the initial shock about what we"d been up to wore off, she told me nothing"s really changed."
"Yeah. You know, boring sounds good. Maybe we"ll get to go home soon."
I stared at the tent walls, thinking I"d slept in a canvas room way too much over the last three years. "Depends on when we find Nian"s "lord.""
"Our fire breather. My prime monster." He struggled to sit up, squinting like his head was killing him. "I need to get moving as soon as possible."
"The hunt can wait until tomorrow." The sound of helicopter rotors thumped in the distance. "Sounds like the retrieval unit is on its way in."
"Good." Will lay down and covered his eyes with his arm. "You should sleep, too."
I needed to, but I worried I"d dream. "In a bit."
I left him to rest. The Chinese team, aided by Lanningham, Blakeney and Kelly, was loading the beast into a canvas litter. A cable with a hook dropped down, which they attached to an industrial sized D-ring on the canvas bag, and the helicopter lifted the Nian off the ground and into the sky. Not a very n.o.ble end for an ancient creature. Even if it had come to kill me, I couldn"t help but feel a little sorry. All these things appearing out of myth, drawn by a dark power, only to be destroyed? It didn"t seem right, for them or for us.
On that cheery note, I went to Johnson"s tent, told him I would be hitting my bunk, and spent the better part of the day asleep.
The sound of vehicles woke me up around six p.m., or to be more accurate, car doors slamming. I stretched on my cot, trying to remember where I was and why. After all the traveling, that moment of confusion first thing had become a normal part of waking up.
China. Right.
I rolled and sat up, reaching for my boots, when I heard a man greet Captain Johnson. I barely stifled a groan. I knew that voice-my father had arrived. Was there still time to go back to sleep?
"His tent"s over there," the captain was saying. "It"s about time he woke up, if you want the honors."
I didn"t bother to stifle the groan this time and hurried to tie my boot laces. I managed to stand as a shadow closed in on the front wall of my tent.
"Son? You awake?"
I sighed. "Yes, sir."
My dad stuck his head in through the tent flap. "Can I come in?"
I shrugged and sat back down on my cot. Dad hadn"t changed much since the last time I saw him-dark hair, muscular build, wry smile-but it was still disconcerting because the older I got, the more I resembled him. The only difference between us, besides the bit of gray hair and laugh lines, were his clothes. Dad had on khaki cargo pants and a denim work shirt, along with hiking boots in much better shape than mine. He looked like an architect on a build site rather than a CIA operative. Maybe it was a disguise: friendly neighborhood surveyor.
He sat down on Lanningham"s bunk. "Heard you had some trouble early this morning."
"We handled it," I said, feeling awkward. After not hearing from him for two months, the last thing I wanted to do was make small talk about killing monsters. "What have you been up to?"
"Hunting."