The Conclave of Shadow (12 page)

We stopped in Sunrise Alley to give ourselves both a moment to breathe. The barred windows were opaque with grime, the so-called sunlight streaming through was diffuse and thin. This was the best it got.

“Anything useful?” I asked.

We'd agreed to wait until we'd left the island to discuss anything of importance, in part so we wouldn't risk being overhead and in part because neither of us wanted to stay in this place longer than we had to. But I needed to know if there was any point in pushing on.

Mei Shen pressed her cheek to the cement wall, earning us not a few concerned glances from passing tourists. I waved them on. Nothing to see here. Move along.

“There's a lot of overlap. More than I've ever seen anywhere else.” She kept her voice low. “It's like they used the real world as a scaffolding to build permanence into the Shadow Realms structures. The cell block is all barracks. There's at least two knights to a cell all down the main avenues – Broadway, Michigan. These ones are empty, but I think they might be for servants? The light…” Her fingers crawled up toward one of the high-set windows as though seeking that light. I placed a hand on her back and soothed comfort and warmth into her tense shoulders. “… it rots the structures. I don't think they like it much.”

“Solitary's on the other side. Sunset Strip. You think that's for more servants?”

Mei Shen gulped. “Or prisoners. We should check the dining hall and kitchens, but I don't think they will be bunked down with the rabble. And I doubt they'd keep anything valuable here where there's so much traffic.”

They. The Conclave. “Then where?” I consulted the map we'd been given with our headsets. “The Officer's Club is a ruin. So that leaves what? The Power House and the Model Industries Building? Aren't there supposed to be catacombs?”

“Pretty sure those are just legends, mother.”

“At least on this side,” I said with gallows' cheer.

We exchanged a look of perfect understanding. We'd barely escaped Lung Di's catacombs when they collapsed. Mei Shen groaned. “Let's hope we don't have to deal with catacombs again.”

“Times like these, I wish your uncle wasn't such a prick.”

“Dining hall. Then let's get outside. I need to be outside.” Despite her attempt to match my levity, Mei Shen looked as peaked as I imagined I had on the ferry.

The dining hall plan got dumped as we approached. Mei Shen's twitches broke into shrieks and jerk-limbed strikes at nothing. I caught her before she could start clawing at her arms. Her voice echoed above the quiet shuffle of feet. A few people around us lowered their headsets, glancing at each other, at me, as though waiting for someone else to help before they had to. Crowd dynamics at their finest. I hugged Mei Shen's arms close and dragged her away.

“Bee. She saw a bee. She's allergic.”

Comprehension dawned, followed by relief at the restoration of the social order and a few nervous chuckles and kindly smiles.

Mei Shen was
compos mentis
enough to latch on to my excuse. “Bee. It was a bee. Damned bees.”

She didn't stop shivering until I'd dragged her along Broadway Avenue and into the relative quiet and brightness of the administrative offices.

“Are we okay here?” I asked.

She nodded, gulping air.

“Are you okay?”

“I don't think we need to worry about the kitchens and the dining hall. It's some kind of breeding ground.”

I shuddered and stroked her hair. I didn't care to consider how shadows replicated. “So. Not bees, then.”

That earned me a laugh, albeit a shaky one. At least she was laughing. “No. Definitely not bees.”

“Let's go outside.”

The wind blowing across the flat parade ground outside the administrative offices cooled the heat in my cheeks and dried the nervous sweat. Mei Shen turned her face to it, eyes closed and knuckles white on the top bar of the chain-link barrier that kept us from tumbling to the rocks and the surf below. The wind was salt-heavy and biting damp, but a welcome relief after the stifling air of the cell block. Apparently not for everyone, as it chased all but the most determined tourists indoors after only a few minutes, leaving Mei Shen and myself mostly alone. Just us and the gulls. Across the bay, the Golden Gate Bridge stretched between the city and the empty Marin headlands, a clay-red cat's cradle. The fog was moving in, swallowing the bridge like some creeping, hungry kaiju.

“I think they must use this for drilling. At night, I mean. There are weapon racks.” Mei Shen waved back the way we'd come. And then she stumbled back against the barrier fence, eyes wide and lips slack.

I uncapped my Sharpie, ready to re-inscribe the wards in the hope that the permanent marker was mightier than the sword.

Mei Shen's grip on my wrist stopped me. “The lighthouse. It's working.”

“It's what?” I whipped around fast enough to get a neck twinge, but the old lighthouse rising above the parade ground wasn't doing anything beyond posing prettily for pictures.

“On the other side.” Mei Shen's gaze flicked nervously around us. I could barely hear her over the wind. She held her hair off her face and looked back across the bay. “The light, they're using it to bolster the bridge.”

“The who… the what, now? You mean against the Voidlands?” I followed her gaze, but all I saw was the fog-devoured Golden Gate. I scrubbed at the marks on my arm, wishing I could see whatever she was seeing, wishing I'd brought some sanitizer to remove the markings on the fly. I didn't know what I could do to stop another earthquake, but dammit I had to try.

The look Mei Shen gave me reminded me of her father at his most annoying, that timeless look that somehow conveyed both infinite patience and impatience. “What else? I cannot believe you've lived here all this time, and yet you had no idea the threat this city faces daily.”

Parents take heed – even more obnoxious than having a teenager who thinks she knows everything is having a teenager who probably does know everything. Or at least a more sizeable chunk of everything than you do. “Maybe instead of training for the snarky comment, snort, and eyeroll triathlon, you can tell me about it in detail? After we get off this island?”

Mei Shen slumped against the fence and pressed her fingers into her eyebrows. “You are right. I should not blame you for what I refused to confide in you. David told me the same many times over. I have been… stubborn.”

So much for suggesting we not do this here and now. “You've been upset with me. And for good reasons.” I smoothed her hair, as much as the wind would allow.

“I know why you had to leave. I do not blame you for that.”

For that. Not for that. “I should have said goodbye to you and Mian Zi.”

She raised her head. Lowered her hands. “Would you have been able to leave if you had tried?”

Possibly not. That had certainly been my thinking at the time. “I should have said goodbye.” I pulled her into my arms. After a moment of resistance, she returned my hug with rib-bending strength.

“So,” I whispered into her wind-tangled hair after I'd gotten control of my tears and my voice. “What do you want to bet that whatever's powering that lighthouse has something to do with Argent's stolen tech?”

Mei Shen pulled away, wiping her eyes even as she chuckled. “Maybe we shouldn't have skipped the Power House.”

T
he bridge had lost
its battle with the creeping fog by the time we tracked back and exited the tour in the proper fashion so we could return our headsets. The exit spat us out into an impressive and slightly unnerving souvenir shop. It was the prison uniform onesies for toddlers that pushed it over the edge of respect, I decided. There was something more than slightly abhorrent about turning human misery into kawaii cuteness and then selling it at an obscene markup, even if the money did go to park restoration and maintenance.

Battling the current of a wave of newly arrived tourists, Mei Shen and I trudged back up the hill toward the Power House and the Model Industries buildings. I thought about Johnny's balance-of-place. Alcatraz's history going back almost two centuries was one of pain and human degradation, but not always. At the start – at least, the start of European occupation – it had been meant to be a home for a lighthouse.

“How long have they been here, the Conclave?” I asked Mei Shen, huffing because the hill's grade was a little too steep for easy conversation.

“The Shadow Dragon Triad avoided having much to do with the island, but even the earliest records indicate it was a place of darkness.” She hugged herself to contain her shudder. “It is only in the past half century or so that there have been any signs of organization, which makes me think that the Conclave moved in around the time the prison was being closed down.”

“Moved in. Or took over. But the lighthouse working, that's new?” I slowed as our progress was blocked by a gaggle of teenagers with their eyes and thumbs glued to their smartphones.

“I haven't come across any indication that it has been in use.” A shadow of a cloud passed overhead. Mei Shen frowned up at the sky, flinching at whatever she saw that I couldn't. “We should not talk about this here. We should–”

“Look out!” Someone charged from behind me, tackling Mei Shen into the crowd of teenagers. Their tumble took down several boys with them under a rising cacophony of
What the fuck, man?
's. I lunged after Mei Shen's attacker, grabbing two fistfuls of dark suit jacket and pulling him off her with mama grizzly strength.

I recognized David Tsung the moment after it was too late to pull my strike.

He doubled over my fist like a deflated balloon, gasping for breath and grabbing for my forearms to keep me from striking again. I skipped back a few steps, not following up, but not quite willing to let my guard down, even if he was a semi-known quantity. “What the fuck?” I asked, echoing the boys around us.

“Run… The ferry… We have to–”

Mei Shen's shriek shut us both up. The boys who had been helping her to her feet scattered like startled sparrows, leaving her alone in the middle of the road, batting and flailing at something that nobody could see.

Nobody except David Tsung. “Get… off… her!” Still struggling with basic body functions like breathing, he nevertheless stumbled toward Mei Shen. I realized that whatever was attacking her, he could see it. Which meant he could fight it.

I stopped one of the kids from taking a retaliatory swing at him. “You lot, get out of here!” I shouted, pushing two more back. Tsung had grabbed at air and seemed to be running through a solo kata, but I could see the tension, the jarring impact of each strike, that indicated he was fighting more than air and imagination.

Mei Shen, too, and the reaction of the teenage boys was to nudge each other and smile as their understanding of the interruption went from crazy-guy-attacking-a-woman-that's-fucked-up to this-is-some-of-that-cool-flash-mob-shit.

At least, until Mei Shen grabbed her head and fell back, heels scrabbling for traction on the road as something invisible dragged her away at speed.

“Get out of here!” I yelled at the boys, and sprinted after my daughter. Tsung followed not two paces behind.

Whatever held Mei Shen dragged her down the escarpment and through the doorway of the Power House. Her ass and kicking feet left a trail in the dust covering the concrete floor of the cavernous room. Scant sunlight filtered through the broken panes, but most of the space was grey and grim and cold as concrete. Even with the ward scrawled down my arm, I could sense the thickness of the shadows here, like smoke at the back of my throat. Whatever had Mei Shen, I still couldn't see it, which left me feeling as helpless as any tourist. I opened my pack, digging for the only thing I knew might help.

Tsung surged past me to deal with the entity attacking Mei Shen. I grabbed her ankle and popped the cap on my Sharpie one-handed. Ducking to avoid being kicked in the face, I started scrawling the wards up her shin. I managed two sigils before she was ripped from my grasp. She had her hands to her throat, her face red and edging toward purple. Tsung was flat on the ground, pinned by nothing I could sense.

I was useless to them. Helpless. And alone. Whether through disinterest or arcane discouragement, the crowds outside hadn't followed our scuffle. I was on my own against forces I couldn't touch or see.

“Fuck this.” I left my pack spilling across the floor and scrambled to my feet, darting for the broken paned windows. I had nothing on hand to remove the Sharpie and no time to do it prettily. But experience told me I didn't need pretty. Padding my elbow with my coat sleeve, I slammed it through one of the window panes. If I survived the day, the National Park Service was going to get a hefty donation from Mr Mystic to assuage my guilt for the vandalism. I snatched up one of the shards that had broken free and shoved my sleeve up. Sending a quiet thanks to Shimizu for making sure I kept up on my tetanus booster, I slashed the jagged edge across the marks on my arm.

In the dimness that descended after my shredding of the ward, my blood shimmered like living darkness, like the Lady's skin and gown. Where before there had only been the noise of Mei Shen's struggles, now the cacophony of a menagerie of shrieks and wails deafened me. I watched in fascinated horror as my blood dripped to the ground, birthing a tide of strange, scarab-like creatures. Their shells glistened like candied apples, as bright as my blood had been dark. As bright a red as Mei Shen's shimmering skin in this place of darkness.

Mei Shen. I saw now that a half dozen Conclave knights had descended on us. Two had pinned Tsung. The other four held my daughter. Or tried to. In the Shadow Realms, she was not quite human woman nor quite dragon. Her scaled skin glowed like coals, ruby bright on the surface, each one edged with darkness like soot – my blood mixed with her father's. Her limbs were lithe, unnaturally long, and the knights smoked and bubbled wherever their shadow flesh met hers. But there were enough of them, with enough single-minded determination, that they held her in spite of the smoke that rose from any contact. One of them had her pinned with an arm around her throat, and even as I got my bearings, I saw her eyes roll white and the glow of her skin fade.