Preview:
That evening Michael stood on the corner near the Chronicle's front entrance waiting for Joseph Lee to make his appearance. The street was empty of pedestrians but due to the lateness of the hour he did not think that unusual. As he watched the traffic moving past him he noticed a black unmarked van parked across the street between two colored midsized cars. It had no windows. As he glanced down at his watch Michael realized that he had been standing there alone in the open for twenty minutes. And Joseph was late. He looked across the street again and wondered if the presence of the van had something to do with Lee's lack of appearance. He screwed up his nerve and started to walk toward it to see if it was a police vehicle or simply parked.
He had taken three steps toward the curb when the black limousine pulled up, blocking his way, and the passenger door opened. Joseph sat alone in the back seat. He leaned out and said, “get in. Hurry!” Michael hesitated, took one last look at the van, and then got in. The limousine pulled away and rolled down the street at a deliberately sedate speed.
“I'm sorry I'm late,” Joseph said. “I had to take care of some personal business.”
“Oh. Did Callahan fill you in?”
Joseph Lee nodded. “You want to see Xue Yaoli. May I ask why?”
“He may be the key to this whole war. When I saw him the other night I got -- an impression -- that he was an ancient,” Michael said.
“I sense that you are beginning to believe the truth of your blood,” Lee said. ”What changed your mind?”
Michael told him what happened to Silvana. “That is most unfortunate. My condolences,” Lee replied soberly. “But what has Xue Yaoli have to do with her murder?”
“He may know who did it. I also have to know why.”
“Michael, Xue Yaoli does not talk to people, and he does not answer their questions,” Joseph protested. “He kills them for even daring to sneeze in his presence.”
“He will talk to me.”
Lee gave him a perfectly confused expression. “How do you know this?”
“Because when he looked at me that night I saw something in his eyes. I may be crazy for saying this, but I realize now that it was an invitation.”
“An invitation for what?”
“I won't know that until I ask him,” Michael explained patiently.
Lee sat back against the cushion of his seat, thunderstruck. “You are like the cat who wanted to look at the queen. Do you realize how dangerous this situation is? If you say the wrong thing to Xue Yaoli you will lose your head, and Alexander will be very unhappy with me for letting you get killed.”
Michael finally lost patience, turned to him and said, “leave Alexander out of this! I have to know why my grandmother and her friend were murdered. Whoever killed them were after me, and they followed me to her house. My grandmother may have tried to delay them and bought my freedom with her life. I want to know the truth and to put closure on this whole affair. Is that clear enough for you?” When he finished he realized he had been shouting, pouring the power of his anger and frustration into the sound of his voice until Lee was sitting back against the car door trying to escape it.
“Perfectly,” Lee replied with a doubtful voice, looking cowed. “You have a powerful voice.”
Regretting his outburst, Michael sat back against the cushion and closed his eyes, all his energy spent. “I'm sorry I shouted. I just don't know what else to do.”
Lee nodded. “All right. Let me make some calls and set it up. But do not be surprised if he turns you down.” He picked up the mobile phone in the glove box, punched a number and spoke into it in Chinese. But it was a dialect of Cantonese and Michael could not understand more than every third word. After the fourth call, Joseph replaced the phone and said to him, “this is amazing. Xue Yaoli has agreed to grant you an interview, and he has guaranteed your safety while you are there. I do not know what you did or said to attract his attention but it is most unusual. We are to go to his private house near the district. We are headed there now.” He picked up the phone again and spoke into it. “John, take us to four thirteen Bayside Drive.”
The limousine made an abrupt u-turn and headed in the opposite direction. As they passed the corner Michael noticed that the black van was gone from the parking space. He looked behind him and tried to see if there were any police cruisers following them, but the lights of the traffic were homogenous bright blobs in the night fog drifting in off the ocean. Strange how that fog always seemed to come up at the oddest times. Whether it was deliberate or just random chance, the effect was the same. No one could follow the limousine easily without losing sight of it in the white veil of mist.
The black car crossed into Northpoint and followed the shoreline to a large house on the other side of the entrance to the Golden Gate Bridge. The house looked like a throwback to older times, a Victorian mansion that had somehow survived the earthquake of 1906. There were few of them left. The others had been torn down long ago and more modern buildings built in their place. This one was a two story structure of Gothic Revival eminence, built of hewn stone instead of brick, with turrets and gables more suited for a castle than a townhome. It sat in the center of a well manicured lawn and garden on a small hillock and surrounded by a high stone wall and iron gate. No light came from any of the tall windows. They had been boarded up on the inside, blocking out the view of the bridge and the entrance to the bay from the ocean.
The limousine turned into its expansive driveway and rolled to a stop. The gate had a sign on it that said, “NO TRESPASSING. NO SOLICITORS. ENTER AT YOUR OWN RISK.” It opened slowly, and the car continued on the long drive toward the front entrance. It pulled up into the square carport that jutted from the entrance. The door set in it sported a large brass knocker with the design of a Chinese dragon on it.
Lee and Michael got out. “This is his place?” Michael said, his voice tinged with awe at the mansion's eminence. “I thought he would have preferred the Bat Cave.”
“Xue Yaoli is an animal in the arena but he has more sophisticated tastes in art and architecture,” Joseph explained. “It has been ages since any of the purebloods has lived in a cave, with or without bats.”
“You mean there are more like him?”
“I misspoke,” Lee replied. “I am not sure how many there are of his tribe still living. He may be the last.”
When they approached the door it opened abruptly and Xue's attendant stepped out to greet them. Everything about him was grey. He was tall and slim, with grey blue eyes and greying brown hair swept back away from his angular face. He was wearing a plain light grey turtleneck shirt and dark grey trousers, not the usual attire for a butler. His expression was taciturn, and he spoke without a formal greeting. “My master is waiting inside. He will see only the young man,” he said to Lee. “You will wait in the drawing room.”
“I understand,” Lee said.
The attendant stepped aside to let them enter a large marble entry hall, where he took their coats.
The house was dark except for a series of small kerosene lanterns placed in the hall and the interior of the adjoining room. The sparse furnishings were covered in large sheets. Apparently Xue did not believe in modern amenities such as electricity or appliances, and there was no sign of a telephone anywhere. Michael wondered how Joseph had engineered this meeting if Xue did not have one, but there was no time to ask or speculate at random.
The attendant pointed to a closed double door at the end of the hall and announced, “he is waiting for you in there.”
Joseph turned to him and said, “Good luck, Michael.”
“Thank you,” Michael replied. With a deep breath and a last glance around, he walked toward it. When he reached the portal he hesitated, tried to calm the butterflies in his stomach, then took hold of the handles and pushed the panels open. The room within was dark and fragrant with the scent of temple incense, sweet and pungeant at the same time, the smoke so thick that he could not see beyond it. Michael fought off the urge to take off his shoes, walked into the darkness and stood waiting. “Hello?” he said softly.
The doors swung closed silently behind him and locked with a subtle click. He was instantly plunged into stygian blackness. The sound sent his heart into sudden overdrive, and his mouth went dry. He turned back toward the door regretting his brash intrusion when he heard a voice penetrating the dark. It was smooth, warm and heavy with an accent, sounding like Hungarian. The sound of it came out thunder and bells at the same time; echoing through his mind, reverberant and compelling. “Come closer, Michael. Do not be afraid.”
Goosebumps crawled across his skin and a small shiver traveled up his spine. Primal simian panic pushed at him to get as far away as he could. Swallowing thickly, Michael worked hard to thrust it aside and ventured timidly, “I can't see you. I'm only human.”
“You are more than that,” the Voice said. “Master your fear, focus your mind and come to me.”
He took a deep breath to will down the pace of his heart, then looked into the blackness and tried to see something. A shadow, a sliver of light. Anything. He finally found two bright spots of red in the smoke, but they were the tips of the sticks smoldering in a holder somewhere to his left. Then he saw a section of pale skin standing out around the figure of a black dragon just in front of him. No, the skin was not just pale but glowing like dim moonlight in the darkness. He took another careful step forward, then another, until the face stood out against a curtain of loose black hair.
Xue Yaoli sat on a reed mat posed in a full lotus, his eyes closed, his angelic face serene as the Buddha. His muscular body was like a statue, his long talons closed into lotus buds, his thumbs and middle fingers touching. He wore black silk trousers and black tabi. The tattoo seemed to stare at Michael with a face of pure demonic rage. Michael waited, breathless, paralyzed. The statue stirred to life and drew a deep breath. The dark eyes opened and flared red fire, while that Voice came from rose colored lips, the tips of his canines clearly visible as they spoke. “Sit.”
Michael went down slowly on the reed mats covering the floor, unable to speak or think clearly at first. He waited for the words that would free him from bondage. He licked his dry lips and tried to concentrate on finding calm, but it was a hard battle against the force of that Voice echoing through his mind. Each word Xue spoke rumbled and clanged and trailed off into some middle distance, shattering his thoughts into tiny fragments. “You have many questions. Ask them.”
He hesitated. There were so many questions flooding his mind that he didn't know where to start. Finally he decided to lay all his cards on the table and said, “I came to ask if you know who killed my grandmother.”
A long moment of silence. Then the blood demon said, “the black dragon.”
Michael moved as close to Xue as he dared. It was like playing with a cobra, and he was no mongoose. “You wear the body tattoo of a black dragon.”
“Yes.”
“Are you a member of the Black Dragon clan?”
“No. It is the sign of my tribe.”
Michael's heart skipped a beat. “Who is Xuan Longyan? Is he a blood drinker too? A vampire?”
Another long pause. Xue replied, “yes.”
“Are you afraid of him?”
The answer came a little faster. “No.”
“What about Xuan Longyan makes you... uncomfortable?”
“He is unbalanced. Diseased with the lust for power.”
“Is that what the dragon war is all about? Power? Or blood?”
“Yes. He seeks dominion over the lives and bodies of humans. He will destroy any who oppose him.” Xue Yaoli was apparently a vampire of very few words, and each word he spoke was smooth and cultured like a pearl of pure flame.
“I have to ask you this,” Michael said. “Why do you fight? Is it for revenge or only for the blood?”
More hesitation. Xue replied, “I feed only on killers. Their lives are already stained with the blood of others.”
“That does not justify killing them the way you do. It is not a fair fight and you know it,” Michael argued.
Xue shrugged. “Nor is it dignified for one such as myself, but it is the way I have hunted my prey for thousands of years.”
“Thousands of years?” Michael said, his wonder growing. ”Then you are immortal?”
Another long pause. “A matter of semantics. It is not important.”
He took a careful breath before speaking. “How many men have you killed this way?”
“So many that I have lost count. I pray every day for the one who will face me in the arena and end my miserable bondage, for I am the slave of my blood and I cannot die.”
“Your blood makes you do this?” Michael asked.
“Yes. I must kill to live, or suffer the terrible agony of the damned.”
He found empathy with Xue, but he could not pity him. “Is that why you take them? What in particular makes their blood important to you?”
“Their blood is rich with the fire and ice of their life force, their chi. I take it fresh and pure in the heat of combat. I draw strength from it.”
“How old are you?”
“Older than you can ever imagine or comprehend.”
“They call you Xue Yaoli. I was told that you have another name but you don't use it anymore.”
“It is from another age, another space. It is irrelevent.”
“From another space? You mean, from another planet?” Michael blurted. His amazement and wonder increased tenfold. He tried to rein them in as he considered the size of the straitjacket he would be wearing if he wrote a single word of this. But his consummate curiosity pushed him to ask, “what is your true name? I promise I will not tell anyone else.”
Xue's smooth face contorted into a puzzled frown, then said, “Xaranantellus Angellobaratu.”
Michael thought he heard the word “angel” somewhere in the mix, but that may have been his conscious human mind groping for a linguistic anchor to hang onto. “That is hard for me to pronounce. Can you shorten it a little?” he said.
Another long moment of silence. Then the angel's Voice spoke again. “Xaran.”
The smooth sound of the first syllable slipped past his ears like the hissing of a snake yet it actually started to sound pleasant to Michael, or there may have been some hypnotic side effect to hearing that Voice he was unaware of. He worked to concentrate and repeated it. “Shá-ran?”
“It has been so long, I had almost forgotten.”
The dragon's eyes blinked back tears. They had to be genuine. Michael could not look into the bright redness of the pupils without feeling dizzy, and he knew no contact lens in the world could make them glow like that. The rose colored lips turned upward into a catlike smile to hide the sadness in them.
Michael suddenly had the impression that the conversation had shifted from the dragon war of the present to something that had happened in the distant past, like a stone tossed into a calm pool of water; sending ripples of discord and loss across the surface of this being's immortal life. Maybe something as traumatic as losing one's whole family in a single night. Michael could scarcely imagine how he knew this. The force of emotion radiating from Xaran's body was too intense to ignore, the sorrow a tangible presence. It was like telepathy but without words or cogent thought.
“Your planet. Is it in this star system?” Michael asked.
“I will not speak of it,” Xaran declared firmly, slamming the door to Michael's probing. The eyes grew intense again, impossible to look at. “If you stray too far from the subject of your inquiry I will end this now.”
Those words forced him into a hasty strategic withdrawal. “Okay, okay. I won't go there. I was just trying to understand you better by knowing something about your past,” he said.
“There is a fine line between understanding and familiarity,” Xaran replied. “Do not cross it.”
Michael sat quietly for a moment and let that sink in. The psychological effects of being alone in the world were telling. How many centuries had Xaran wandered the Earth before settling in San Francisco and embarking on this pointless path of violence? What had he done before? “You have chosen to isolate yourself from the rest of the world. Is it because of what you are, or because of what you have to do to survive? There are other vampires who don't have to kill to get their blood.”
“You are speaking of the hybrids. Their blood is diluted and weak. It does not rule them as does mine.”
“Do you know Dan Longchi?”
“Corvina. The red dragon. Yes.”
Michael said, “He offered the gift of immortality to me, a complete stranger. He wanted to make me into one of them. Why would he do this? At first I thought it some kind of bribe to stop me from writing about the dragon war, but now I am not so sure. I must understand why.”
“He saw the same energy I saw in you when you came to the arena. Your chi is stronger than you know. The blood of kings runs in your veins, through your grandmother's blood. The black ones know what you are, and they want to stop the line before it grows into a dynasty.”
“What are you talking about?” Michael asked. “Is that why she was murdered?”
“She was the last of her tribe. Her line goes back to the beginning.”
“Wait. I don't understand. The beginning of what?”
“You will learn all in time. The dragon's blood is given only to those deemed worthy to receive it.” ♦
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