Chapter 24
Back in the car Bonga started the engine and said, “Let’s go wake Father Morgan.”
Chun considered. “I do not need to wake Father Morgan in the middle of the night. Sabin convinced me that your intentions are good. You may still be making a terrible mistake though.”
“How do I resolve that?”
Chun hunched in his seat. “Time. I need to see her. See if I can work with her.”
“Do you remember when I told you not to kill anyone without talking to me first?”
“Yes, sir.”
Bonga steered the car through the darkness. There was light fog, and the headlights cut bright swathes through it. Every streetlight had a halo around it, and Chun found himself searching for signs of artisans or other wizards throughout the drive.
“I wonder if this is what Fu Tan looked like before the war.”
“You had streetlights and cars?” Bonga looked in the rearview mirror at Chun.
Chun shook his head. “Not in the way you think. Your people are happy with copies. My people valued the unique. Each important thing was built by a great artisan, or a team of artisans. I would have been displeased if I bought a horseless carriage, and then discovered that my neighbor had one exactly the same.”
“You didn’t have standardization?”
“Not the way you do. Every rifle in basic is identical to the next. The Skrit sent men into battle with swords made in molds. We had swords made by masters, carried by soldiers hundreds of years old. When I went to Ulai Hills we had two hundred men and eight hundred retainers against twenty thousand. We lost a hundred retainers and Chun Lo was blinded. We killed them all.”
Bonga stared at him for a few seconds, then jerked his attention back to the road. “You took a thousand against twenty thousand, and you lost a hundred men?”
“Yes. A hundred men we could not afford to lose.”
“God’s blood,” Bonga said.
They rode in silence for several minutes. Chun forgot about the sights and sank into his memories. A tickle at the edge of his breath roused him.
“Nephilim.” He pointed through a tall brick wall beside the car.
“That would be Annabeth,” Bonga said. “My house is over there.”
Chun reached down and checked the bayonet in his boot. Bonga reached over and squeezed his shoulder.
“You won’t need that, remember?”
You’re right. I don’t need a knife. I need my sword and my armor.
Chun swallowed hard and forced his heart to beat its normal rhythm. His palms felt damp, and he wiped them on his pants.
“Do you need to put this off?” Bonga turned back in the front seat and gave Chun an empathetic glance.
Chun shot him a surprised stare. “Once you sight them, never lose sight of them.”
“We’re going to talk. Not fight. Can you remember that?”
“I will not strike first.”
She is young. I can surprise her by withstanding the first exchange.
“There will be no fighting,” Bonga said.
Chun took a few rapid breaths. “I will not strike first.”
Bonga stopped the car. A hundred feet away, in front of a house, a woman sauntered between them and one of the house lights. Chun stepped out of the car, drawing his bayonet as he stood. The woman laughed and twirled a butcher knife across her fingers.
Bonga got out and looked back and forth. “Calm. We’re all friends here.” He walked to the woman, and Chun sucked his breath in when she turned to him.
They do not have friends.
“Jhon. I see you brought him.” Her voice sounded like crystal chimes.
“Let me have the knife, Annabeth.”
Chun tensed, but she did not kill him.
“I don’t think he likes me.”
“The knife, Annabeth.”
She looked him in the face. “He’s about to strike.”
Yes. I am.
“Knife.”
She slapped the handle into his hand, and after a couple of seconds she let go of the blade. Bonga transferred the knife to his other hand, then took her hand in his and led her toward Chun.
That was a surprise.
Chun studied her walk and decided she had a knife in her right boot and would reach him with her left foot forward. He took a half step away from the car, turned his right shoulder toward her, and transferred the bayonet to his left hand. He drew his breath in, hard in the pit of his stomach, ready to attack or defend.
They stopped about five feet away. Bonga looked ready to dive between them. The nephilim had her weight slightly on her left foot.
“Chun, I would like you to meet Annabeth Toy. She is my adopted daughter. Annabeth, this is Chun Fan, wizard from Fu Tan.”
“You seem a little on edge,” Annabeth said. “It’s not me, is it?” She shifted her weight to her right foot.
Chun edged back an inch to fix his spacing. “I have met your kind before.”
She laughed. “Women? I should hope so.”
She seeks to disarm me with humor.
“Annabeth,” Bonga said.
“Nephilim,” Chun said.
“I didn’t choose what I am.”
“Neither does a snake.”
Her false smile disappeared, replaced by real anger. Bonga pushed her back a step, then placed himself in front of Chun. “Give me the knife.”
Chun looked at Annabeth, then Bonga, then back. His hand tightened on the handle until his knuckles creaked. His breath confirmed the knife in her boot. Chun squatted, careful to keep his attention on Annabeth, and put the bayonet back in its sheath.
Let us see what they make of this.
“Chun,” Bonga said, hand still out.
I will not go naked into the fire.
Chun straightened. “She has a boot knife.”
Surprise flicked in his eyes, and he turned on her. “I told you not to show up armed for your introduction.”
“I’m not,” she said. “It’s just a little thing, in case I need to clean under my nails.”
I will help you with that.
Bonga looked back and forth between them. “You won’t start it?”
“No, sir,” Chun said.
“No,” Annabeth said.
“Annabeth, would you please park the car?” Bonga’s voice was tense with worry.
She stepped away, and walked sideways to the car, so she could remain facing him. He stepped back and put Bonga between them just in case she had a weapon in the car.
She drove the car up to the house and Jhon led Chun to the driveway. She parked in front of the garage, then got out. Chun backed away from her, taking him off of the pavement and out into the front lawn.
“What’s your knife for?” she smirked.
“In case I need to clean under your nails.”
She laughed. “I’ll remember that.” She turned and went inside.
Chun walked up to the doorway and looked inside. It was a nice home. Wood floors, warm colors, the smell of food and cleaning supplies.
It is her lair, and she knows all of its secrets.
“Well?” Bonga exhaled and wiped a bead of sweat away.
“I’ll sleep in the yard,” Chun said.
“Suit yourself,” Bonga said, and closed the door.
* * *
The house had a stone foundation about four feet high, with wood construction above. At some point in the past someone had run a small farm here, and the property was divided up into large animal pens separated by walls of the same type of stone. There was a lean-to behind the house, but he didn’t know if a bullet would penetrate a stone wall a few inches thick. Instead of the roof, he decided to put two walls between himself and a potential gunshot. He picked a spot in the mist, on the safe side of one of the stone walls in the garden, and waited out the night.
Chun meditated through the rest of the night. Every time Annabeth rolled over, he checked to make sure he knew what she was doing. When she got up before dawn, the mist, barely more than fog, was still falling steadily. Chun didn’t mind the cool, but wet clothes were not his favorite. He stretched out, but stayed in cover behind the wall.
Bonga walked around from the front of the house a couple of hours after dawn. He wore tall boots and had an umbrella. Chun decided not to tease him about it.
“Morning, Chun.”
“Good morning, sir.”
Bonga looked at the lean-to. “Why are you out here in the rain?”
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“This wall is bullet-proof. That one may not be.”
“What do you think about paranoia?”
Chun smirked at him. “Of all my people, I am the only survivor.”
Bonga smiled slightly at that. “She has the most finely tuned sense of danger in the world. I would even pit her instincts against yours.”
“That is why you never let them go once you find them,” Chun said.
“She slept in the house. You could have too.”
“She did not sleep,” Chun said.
Bonga frowned. “Can you tell that from here? Or did you have to do some scouting?”
“I can tell from here. Right now, she is getting dressed.”
“You’re not a peeper, are you?”
“Peeper?” Chun cocked his head.
“Do you enjoy spying on women when they are not dressed?”
“No, sir.”
“Did you know when I got up?”
“No. You do not have a nephilim aura.”
“Well, we’re about to leave and go to the office. I was going to invite you, but I doubt you’ll get into the same car with her.”
Into an even more enclosed space than the house?
“I… am not ready for that.”
Bonga smiled. “That means you think there will be progress. I can accept that. Once we’re gone, go inside and get cleaned up. While you’re searching my house, I expect you to put everything back exactly where you found it. And don’t break anything.”
Chun smiled. “I will be careful, sir.”
Bonga went back inside, and a few minutes later Annabeth peeked around the corner and waved at him. “Don’t stretch my panties out.”
Chun frowned at her from behind the wall and breathed a sigh of relief when the car drove away.
The inside of the house matched his initial impression. Bonga had a bedroom on the ground floor. Annabeth’s room was upstairs. His portion of the house was spotless. Her room was chaotic, though everything under the laundry was clean.
There were no evil books or materials. Chun checked every inch of the house, searching for secret doors or hidden storage. The only thing like that was a safe in the room across the hall from Bonga’s bedroom.
Chun found a loaf of bread and some cheese in the kitchen, then settled down in front of the safe and ate while he played with the lock. It took a couple of hours, but once he understood the mechanism it opened easily.
The safe held an old firearm with a round magazine, some ammunition, several thousand dollars in cash, and some papers labeled ‘certificate of deposit.’ It also held the titles for the house and the car.
The library was mostly history and legends--descriptions of people, creatures, places, and artifacts. Bonga had a pair of textbooks on breath, but they were wildly inaccurate. He knew he wasn’t supposed to change anything, but he found a blank piece of paper, wrote ‘that isn’t how it works’ on it, and tucked it into the most offensive volume.
Annabeth’s room had some pornography in the stand beside the bed. Chun flipped through it and rolled his eyes. All of these boys were toddlers, or little better. Some of them looked like they didn’t even shave yet.
He’d heard of panties in basic training, but the gauzy little things he found in Annabeth’s dresser seemed so insubstantial there was no point to wearing them. He tugged on the fabric gently. No wonder she was worried he might stretch them out. He tried to refold them and gave up after a few tries.
Why am I trying to hide my passage? She knows I am here.
He threw the gauzy unders back in the drawer and closed it.
All totaled up it was a healthy house. There were a couple of rings with fading investments, tools for reloading ammunition in the basement. Books on healthy topics. Chun went back over the house looking for signs that they might have moved something evil out of the house before letting him in. It was always a possibility, but he couldn’t find any incriminating depressions in the carpet or light spots on the wood floors.
Search complete, he took a shower and washed his clothes, then figured out how to turn the dryer in the basement on.
“I should have used the washing machine too.”
It made sense that Bonga and Annabeth would be hungry when they returned from work. Chun scouted the refrigerator and freezer. They were well-supplied. A shadow went by the window at the top of the basement wall. A large, plump bird with long, bright green tail feathers landed in the yard. Perfect. Fresh was better than frozen.
Chun killed the bird with an expert knife throw, then drained the blood. Next, he drew heat in from his surroundings and funneled it into the bird’s skin. Once that was done the feathers came out easily. After plucking, he dressed the bird and took it inside.
The kitchen was an open space with countertops on three sides. One of the counters divided the kitchen from the living space on the other side.
He found a dish large enough to hold it, and then chopped enough vegetables to stuff it. The oven didn’t just turn on. You had to push the knob in. Then it made a hissing sound. He applied some heat to the source of the hissing and got a burst of flame that cost him his eyebrows.
From there it was easy. He grilled some sweet potatoes over the stove top--this time without losing whatever was left of his eyebrows, made a salad, and then sat down to wait.
He sensed Annabeth a couple of hundred feet out and his heart promptly sped up.
“Maybe this wasn’t a good idea.” Chun glanced around. At least he knew where the other exits were now.
Bonga came inside first. “Smells good in here. Are you ready for Annabeth to come in?”
Absolutely not.
Chun nodded and hung on to the edge of the countertop to keep his hands from drifting to the kitchen knives.
Annabeth walked in and sniffed the air. Her face split into a feral grin. “What’s for dinner, Chun?”
She thinks she has trapped me. What did she smell?
“Poultry.”
“What kind?”
“I don’t know.”
Bonga looked back and forth between them. “Where did you get the bird, Chun?”
“It flew into the back yard.”
Bonga put his head in his hands. “Did it have bright green tail feathers? Really long. With a spot on the end that looks a bit like an eye?”
“Yes.”
Annabeth started laughing and couldn’t stop. She laughed until she was clutching at her stomach and wheezing.
When she finally calmed down Bonga turned to her. “You know this is the Sikale’s peacock. Why is that funny?”
They have a pet bird? From their name, they are Skrit, but they should still have better sense.
She winked at Chun. “Mrs. Sikale hates me. She called me a daughter of Satan, which I thought was pretty close to racism, since I’m nephilim. Jhon absolutely forbade me to do anything to her.”
Annabeth crossed the room, and every hair on Chun’s body stood on end. He wanted the butcher knife. And the cleaver. And a good set of armor. The trim board on the edge of the countertop ripped off in his hands.
She paused three feet away, shifting her weight from back foot to front, and he saw her eyes flicker toward the door. Then she reached out and patted him on the shoulder. “Calm down. I was just coming over to thank you for taking revenge on Mrs. Sikale for me.”
Bonga sighed and took the section of trim from him. “Well. Everything is ready. It won’t help the Sikales if we refuse to eat it.”
“Have Chun take them dinner. It could be a peace offering,” Annabeth said.
Chun snickered.
“Annabeth, stop trying to help, and go pour us some whiskey. Make mine a quadruple,” Bonga said.
He turned on Chun. “Why would you just kill a bird?”
Chun shrugged. “Because they are delicious.”
Bonga bowed his head and sighed. “I mean, why didn’t you think it belonged to someone?”
“Decent people do not keep birds as pets.”
Bonga frowned at him and tilted his head. “May I ask why?”
“Living with birds brings disease.”
“We do it all the time,” Bonga said.
“How old is the oldest person you know?” Chun crossed his arms.
Bonga blinked, then clenched his jaw. “God dammit. Look, you’re in the city. Don’t hunt anything here unless you have permission.”
“I’m sorry,” Chun said.
Bonga shook his arms out and relaxed. “Don’t worry,” he said with a grin. “We’ll find a way for you to make it up to them.”