“He’s expanding his army,” I said. “Exponentially.”
Cormac said, “Kitty, if that thing is bound to him, that means Roman knew you were here before that wolf pack found us. He tracked you with that.”
I said, “We have to get rid of this.”
“Will defacing the coin work?” Cormac asked.
“The vampire who wore it is destroyed?” Anastasia asked.
“Yeah,” I said.
“Then it should.”
“I’ll need a hammer,” Cormac said.
Anastasia went up the stairs and called in Chinese to the woman at the counter. After a moment, she returned, carrying a hefty sledgehammer, which she gave to Cormac. He lay the coin on the concrete floor, raised the hammer over his head, and brought it down with a heavy crack, then a second, and a third. The thing sparked under the blows, bouncing. When Cormac moved aside, I picked up the coin—flattened, now. All the markings had been mashed, erased. It almost seemed a shame. I held it up for Anastasia to see, and she nodded.
“That should do it,” Cormac said.
I held it away from me, looking at it askance. It probably belonged in the nearest trash can, but I shoved it into my pocket. I’d deal with it later.
Anastasia started for the exit in the back of the room. “We have to meet the one who will take us to the pearl.”
Ben, Cormac, and I regarded each other in a silent conference. Was it too crazy? Too dangerous? Or fascinating enough to make it all worthwhile? Cormac gave a curt nod—he was game. I imagined that Amelia’s curiosity played a part in his willingness to continue. Ben’s lips were pursed. He wasn’t happy, but he wasn’t going to argue. His back was straight, his stance confident—he’d follow whatever decision I made.
I wanted to see this Dragon’s Pearl. With the two men following, I joined Anastasia, who waited by the open door. We went through it to another set of stairs.
Chapter 7
WE FOLLOWED THE stairs up to a doorway, wood with rusted hinges, that opened into a narrow alley between tall brick buildings. Lights shone through shaded windows, the sound of a TV carried. This should have been a mundane scene, evening in a city neighborhood, but the voices were in Chinese and I felt a sense of incongruity, as if I had entered another country, another world. Pagoda rooftops across the street gave the skyline a foreign air.
Leaving the alley, we walked for a time, rounding a couple of corners. The streets were arranged on a grid; even so, I didn’t know whether I’d be able to find my way back. The place seemed narrow and mazelike. I stayed close to Anastasia. Ben and Cormac trailed, keeping watch behind us. My nose worked overtime, taking in scents. At one point, we must have passed a restaurant—the air became warm, heavy with the odors of spices, vegetables, and cooking meat. It tickled my nose, then my stomach. We continued on and the smell faded.
Finally, we turned down a small, quiet street and stopped before a door—the back of a shop, maybe. A handwritten sign, laminated and taped to the door, announced the name of a shop and its hours in both English and Chinese: Great Wall Video. This wasn’t what I was expecting of Anastasia’s secret contact. We should have been meeting someplace truly clandestine and mysterious. Gambling parlor, opium den …
Anastasia knocked, and a moment later a young woman opened the door. She was in her midtwenties, Asian features, dark eyes, pink plastic-rimmed glasses. Her short dark hair was dyed in magenta streaks. She wore a black baby-doll T-shirt, faded jeans, and big black shit-kicking boots. Techno music played in the shop behind her. The back room walls were covered with movie posters.
Her arms were braced across the doorway, and she wore a serious frown. “Yeah?”
“May we come in?” Anastasia said in her most suave, amenable voice.
“Why? Who are you?” She glanced over Anastasia’s shoulder to the rest of us, who were watchful and bristling.
“My name is Anastasia. I need to speak with you.”
“Why not come to the front like everyone else?”
“Because I need to speak with you quietly, Grace Chen.”
The woman’s eyes widened. Her lips pressed together, as if determined not to ask the next obvious question—she clearly didn’t know Anastasia, so how did the vampire know her?
“I can’t let you in. Tell me what you want right here,” Grace Chen said, nodding at the threshold.
Anastasia said something in a language I presumed was Chinese and handed over a rolled slip of heavy paper that she’d drawn from her trouser pocket. Still glaring, the woman unrolled it and studied the text written on it for a long moment.
In the alley, I fidgeted, feeling cornered. I kept looking one direction and the other, but the far corners of the street were hidden in shadows. Ben was right there with me, and brushing his arm only comforted me a little. Cormac didn’t seem bothered.
Chen rolled up the slip of paper and pointed it at Anastasia. “Where did you get this?”
“From the man who wrote it.”
“This is five hundred years old,” she said, and I gaped.
“Yes.”
With a sigh, the woman stepped aside. “Fine. Come in.”
We followed Anastasia inside as Chen looked us over. The back room was tiny, barely managing to hold a workroom sink and cleaning supplies in one corner, and a few rows of shelves stuffed with cardboard boxes and dusty merchandise. Visible through the back doorway, the front of the store—a video rental place specializing in imports—wasn’t much bigger than the back room. Narrow, dim, closetlike, the place was crammed as if it had been collecting items for decades. Shelves,
